Jar of Hearts
by Raven's Favorite Emotion
Summary: AU "I've already collected my jar of hearts, I didn't need to add another one to the equation." Garth/Tara
1. Prologue

**Disclaimer: I only own the idea. Really. That's it. **

_Jar of Hearts_

_Prologue_

There's a twilight zone between waking up and being fully and blissfully asleep.

Most people aren't aware of this, seeing as how some seem to enjoy waking up as soon as they are aware that they are halfway conscious. Some people have never even been in that area before, because they embrace reality too much.

And then there are the people like me. We relish this time between the world of the living and the world of the unaware. We know that as soon as you do fully wake up that you will most likely be somewhere that you will regret.

I try to drown myself in that moment, because I always know what's going to come next. I always know that as soon as I have to wake up I won't want to, because this feeling of nothingness really is the best part of my day.

They say ignorance is bliss. They are right. Here's a Fact of Life: _They_ are always right, and that is a lesson that I have learned the hard way. It is better to know nothing than something, after all. Personally I wish that I was innocent.

I wish I didn't know what a man's hand felt like on my body. I wish I didn't know what it was like to get your heart trampled on, to know what the sweet, sweet flavor of nicotine really was like. There are so many sensations and feelings and wishes that have all been wasted by me.

If I had the choice I would start all over, way back in utero. Maybe I would abort myself.

It's not a bad idea.

It'd probably be better for everybody.

**A/N: This story has started out in so many bits and pieces and now I feel like it's really come together. This _was _going to be a Jinx/Wally story, but I decided Tara/Garth would be better. And it is already. I'm so glad that I decided to change this. **

**This story will be very different from 'Philophobia' though it may be told in similar ways (i.e. first person). **

**I just hope you guys will enjoy it as much as I'm going to. **

**(Also, the next chapter of 'Philophobia' shall be up soon. My computer had a virus and deleted all of the next chapter. It was not fun, having to re-write all that, let me tell you.) **


	2. Chapter One

**Disclaimer: I don't own _Teen Titans _and I don't think I ever will. And I'm just fine with that. **

_Jar of Hearts_

_Chapter One_

"Whore."

The word is said with just enough venom to sting, with the right amount of gusto to seem almost gleeful. I turn around to see who just said that nasty word aimed straight at the heart of me, but I can't see who said it. It really doesn't matter anyway. I know they mean it.

I would be a liar, if I wasn't one already, if I said that that word didn't hurt. I would also be lying, though, if I said that I didn't deserve it.

That word just opened another unhealed wound on my already mangled heart. I actually do have one, somewhere down here in this black hole that other people call my soul.

I continue walking as if I didn't just feel the bloody blow to the back of the head. I tell myself, just like I would tell Kole if she was with me, that the words that they say don't mean a thing. That I don't care, because I don't have to care. I'm Tara Markov, after all.

I'm a bitch, a slut, a whore. I'm easy, nasty, and the girl that everyone talks about but no one will ever say anything to her face because they're terrified of her. I know the many adjectives that describe the real me. After all, I know they're all true.

_Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can never hurt you._

This is a lie. I know first hand how much words can hurt.

..O..

Kole sighs and leans her face into her hand as she watches Joey Wilson walk across the courtyard with this dopey look on her face. I light a cigarette and try not to laugh meanly about the fact that half the girls in our general area are doing the same thing.

Personally I don't see the attraction. Sure the guy has great hair, it's curly and blonde, but other than that I don't think much about him. But, then again, he's a little young for me. He's probably my age, but like I said, that's just a bit too young.

Kole is so obviously smitten that I would find it funny if I wasn't so disgusted by it. Honestly, Kole could probably do much better than a high school boy. But Joey was, in her words, dreamy. Plus he was 'soulful' because he could play guitar and do a million other things that just light Kole's world on fire.

"Why don't you just go talk to him? It'd be a lot easier than sitting her pining for him. I'll talk to him for you, if you want," I offer, taking a long, sweet drag. Ah the lovely taste of nicotine. I have missed you, my dear toxic friend.

That makes Kole sit up a little straighter. "What? No of course I can't do that! And neither can you!" Kole looks at me positively alarmed, and then she does a double take when she sees the cancer stick in my hand. "You aren't supposed to have those at school! What if someone catches you?"

"Honey, if they catch me now it's about damn time. And that's all I have to say." The teachers at our school could care less about the student population smoking unless we're stupid enough to blow smoke right in their face. Either that or they're all very unobservant. I'm thinking it's the latter because there's this kid, whose nickname is Cinderblock because he's built like one and he's just as intelligent, who sells weed in the alleyway between the cafeteria and the English wing.

Kole makes her concerned face, which always makes me feel bad because I know that she actually _cares _just as much as I just straight up _don't care_. It does not, however, make me feel bad enough to stop. Once you get addicted to something, whether it be cigarettes or something more deadly, it's just that much harder to stop. You actually have to _want _to. Well, to put it bluntly, I don't want to.

The smoke coming off the end of my cigarettes is just another veil between me and the world. And I want to keep it that way.

"You know, tobacco kills one person ever ten seconds and is set to kill ten million people by the year 2025."

I have to fight the urge to roll my eyes. I'm pretty sure that I lost that battle. Kole is now on this kick of giving me fun facts about how deadly my cigarettes are as if that's going to stop me. The thing is that if she just _asked _me to stop I might even consider it, but I know she won't so I don't.

"Did you know that red heads have a higher risk of unplanned pregnancy due to some chemical in their body? Evidently the hue of their hair has to do with some hormone and that triggers the chemical to do its thing."

"Really?" Kole reaches a hand up to her strawberry blonde ponytail and looks like she's about to cry.

Sometimes she's just too easy.

"No," I reply, putting out my cigarette. I think I just saw our Vice Principal walk by, and he's probably the one teacher that cares about the little things, like drugs and other illegal substances, during school hours. And he hates me and is out to get me. He watches me like a hawk and tries to pretend that he doesn't.

Personally I don't blame him.

Kole looks extremely relieved and I have to bite down on my cheek to keep from laughing at her naivety. "Oh, good. So, are you actually coming to first period today or are you just going to chill out in your car?" We begin our descent into hell as soon as the bell rings.

"We're only about a month in, so I'm pretty sure I'm coming." This year I've decided to start coming to class more often because this is the year that grades really count. I've always cared before, kind of, but I know better than to slack off this time. Besides, it's not the school work that's hard. It's just everything else.

"You know, I heard that we got a new kid today."

"In the middle of the first month? No kidding."

"No kidding." Kole maneuvers her way through two idiots that have taken it upon themselves to clog up the hallway just so they can get that sick pleasure of being stupid. If it was me I would have just walked straight through them just so I could get hit and avoid the rest of the school day, but unfortunately for me and the rest of the world I was on the other side of them and missed the scuffle completely. "They say he's really cute, but I wouldn't know. I haven't seen him."

"Then how do you know about him?" Kole's ability to somehow get in the middle of everyone's business, even though she had almost no friends other than me (Which, like most things in my life, is my fault. She probably could have a thousand friends, as nice as she is and as pretty, but for some reason she's stuck by me all these years. I will forever be grateful to her for that, even if most of the time I don't act like it.) still astounds me.

Kole shrugs innocently. "People," she concludes as she slips into her class, Physics. Kole's dad is this major scientifical freak, and he passed that gene down to his daughter and she's excellent at science now. She wins most of the science fairs that our school hosts and she takes a class down at the local junior college already.

I roll my eyes at her but she has already walked in the classroom and doesn't see my waste of calories. (Because, evidently, even when you move your pinkie you are burning calories.) It's not difficult for me to say that Kole's 'people' and I don't get along. It's not that I don't like people (well, okay, maybe I hate most of them just a little) it's just that people don't like _me_. So I return the favor. With gusto.

With a sigh I propel myself through the door and watch teenagers in their natural habitat. They are almost all acting like idiots, just like I suspected they would. And people really wonder about why I like older men.

I manage to snag a seat in the back corner, and surprise surprise, no one bothers to sit next to me. I don't really wonder why anymore. Unpopularity, according to about eighty percent of the people in this high school, is like AIDS. If you sit next to someone that has it you might just end up getting it too.

As I have anticipated no one bothers to sit directly to my right, and it is the only seat left unavailable. Someone did have to sit in the seat in front of me, the poor dear. I do so hope that I don't contaminate her.

The girl in front of me is the type of girl that I could have been, maybe, if my life worked out the way it should have. She has friends coming out of her ears, a loving boyfriend despite the purity ring stuck on her pretty little finger, and she's one of the luckiest people that I know and she doesn't even realize it.

Fact of Life: You don't ever realize what you have until it's gone.

Her name is Cassandra Sandsmark, known to her friends as 'Cassie'.

I hate her. I know that it's not a very concrete reason to hate someone, after all jealously and hate are two very different beasts, but I can't help it. Besides, she's so easy to hate, what with all of her 'school spirit' and 'good deeds' and the fact that she's probably going to college on a full ride because she's so awesome.

Cue the puke here, please.

If I was on the outside looking in I'd probably laugh at myself for being so petty. But, since I'm only myself, the only thing that I can do is hate myself even more for being so idiotic and ugly inside.

I hate me, and that's not an opinion. It's a fact.

Suddenly the teacher rouses himself to get out of his computer chair and decides to start class. I place my number two pencils neatly beside my binder and fold my hands on top like a good girl. It _is _a reasonable to make have a good first impression, after all. Or, at least, that's what Kole would say, if she was here, which she's not.

Kole's almost like my conscience. Sometimes, if I know that I'm about to do something that I shouldn't, or that would be considered 'wrong' I think of Kole and what she would say if she were right beside me, or if she was in my shoes. And then I laugh and do whatever the hell that I want. But I like the fact that there is another choice, the fact that I can choose to do the right thing.

But then, I always choose not to anyway. So there might as well not be a choice in the first thing.

It's always nice to know your options though, am I right?

"Hello class," the teacher begins nasally, shuffling papers at his podium. He then clears his throat and waits for everyone to settle down before he begins. My mind begins to wander, because I can tell that he's already going to be boring, as always, and I notice that the seat next to me hasn't filled up.

It's not like I can say that I'm surprised. I don't know why I keep fixating that empty seat, the only seat that's empty in the whole entire room, but I do and it's starting to get on my nerves. With a huff of irritation at myself I get out one of my empty spirals and begin doodling in it. Maybe I'll get extra good girl points for looking as though I'm writing notes.

The monotone of the teacher's voice stops and I look up to see if someone died. It'd be a good excuse to get out of class, anyway. Maybe they died of boredom. Now that's an idea. I haven't tried that method yet.

There's a boy standing in the doorway. My throat closes up when I look at him because I know exactly who he is. It's Garth.

I haven't seen him in years, not since he moved away in third grade. We used to be best friend in my little fairy tale world that ended years ago. He doesn't know Tara. He won't even recognize me.

"Class, we have a new student." Mr. Russel drones on about him and how we should help Garth feel 'welcome' and all of that. (Once again just gag me. I mean really. Here this teacher is throwing a kid to the sharks, all of whom are supposed to be _welcoming_?) "Tell us something about yourself, son."

Garth begins talking in that slow but sure way that I remember him always speaking in and I'm sitting in my seat, silently praying that he won't notice me. But of course he will, because I'm sitting next to the only empty desk in this whole entire classroom.

He notices me soon enough, just like I knew he would, and his purple eyes meet mine. He's better looking than I remember him being. If he wasn't himself I'd probably be all over him in a New York minute.

I raise my hand, still looking straight at him. I glare. "Mr. Russel, can I go to the bathroom? I think I'm going to be sick." And then I get as far away from him as I possibly can.

Fact of Life: I'm always going to be a disappointment.

**A/N: Cassie Sandsmark is the current Wonder Girl. There will be several cameo apperances from the DC Universe in this story if I don't feel like making up an OC. Does this chapter seem kind of rushed to you guys? I think so, but I don't know. This is just a taster. The next chapter is MUCH longer. I hope you enjoyed!**


	3. Chapter Two

**Disclaimer: I don't own Terra or Garth or Kole or Nark or anyone cool. I own like three people in this story, tops. If even that. **

**A/N: Nark is Gnarrk in the show. The caveman guy that threw Kole around. Yeah, that's him. Make sense? I hope so, because we'll be seeing quite a bit of him in this chapter. And in several up coming chapters. I'm rather fond of him myself. **

**Also there's some drinking and implied sex ahead. Not for very long, and I don't go into vivid detail, it's just I thought you guys deserve to know. That, and this will probably be one of the only chapters that this happens in, okay? (BTW Tara is eighteen, so there is not statutory rape in this story. She's legal.)**

_Jar of Hearts_

_Chapter Two_

Once Upon a Time, in a far away land a man and a woman fell in love. But they couldn't be together, for the man was royalty and the woman was not. But they had a child anyway and then the woman and that child had to move away, but only with gobs of money so that the child could have everything that she wanted in life.

The little girl grew up and she was christened Terra and she had beautiful blonde hair and blue eyes and an easy smile with a sunny disposition. She had everything that she could have ever wanted.

And then she grew up and fell in love with a man that was much older than she was. He was a teacher and theirs was a forbidden romance. They couldn't be together no matter how much they wanted to be because society wouldn't let them.

So they snuck around until they were caught and the man was sent to jail and the girl was mocked and ridiculed and called a whore all for falling in love. The man that she fell in love with denied that anything had ever happened, and she died, sorrow deep in her heart.

Basically what all that crock of bull means is that my dad was an all important guy over in Markovia and he didn't give a shit about me or my mother and he gave my mom a butt load of money so she'd shut up about me and so his wife, the Queen, wouldn't get pissed.

Then I grew up for a little while, and ended up looking exactly like my mother (which can either be seen as a blessing or a curse). I had more friends than you could shake a stick at and then one day my whole world shattered because I fell in love with the World Geography teacher.

It wasn't my fault. He had a soothing voice and nice hands and how was I supposed to know that he was just using me, that he was only saying that he was in love with me just so I would have sex with him? I was only fourteen.

Then my mother found out thanks to my diary entries and suspicious behavior. Then we went to court and my mother and step dad put him in jail and left me on my own to nurse my own broken heart.

I didn't go to school for weeks and when I came back I was a totally different person. I wasn't Terra anymore. I was Tara, pronounced tar-a, for tar black, just like my new heart. I became a totally different person, the person that was always there underneath my skin, just waiting for her chance to escape and show the world what I was really like.

I buried Terra alive under layers of rubble and then became the cliché bitchy mess that we all know and love today, the one with only one friend and with a frigid exterior. The one that everyone gossips about simply because they can.

Terra doesn't exist anymore. Tara is in control now, and she would never be that foolish or naïve or stupid. She knows what men are like and she smokes and she has sex and does all those things that your mother warned you not to be with simply because she can.

I'm not the girl people want me to be.

Fact of Life: Everyone has a dark side.

oOo

I'm stacking each and every ketchup packet that I used on my French fries one on top of the other in an attempt to be efficient and artistic with my trash clean up. Hey, even I care about the environment.

Kole, however, doesn't appreciate my masterpiece. "Will you quit doing that? People are going to think that you're a weirdo."

I shrug. I stopped caring about what other people think a long time ago. Besides, most of them are losers and jerks anyway, and I shouldn't bother wasting my time on them.

Kole reaches across the table and snatches them from me. "Now eat your fries."

"Yes mom." I roll my eyes and pop one into my mouth and chew slowly just to get on her nerves. She's in a bad mood because she just found out that she failed her latest Physics test because she disagreed with the teacher on some sort of genius scientist thing that I have no idea what to say because, well, I don't understand it. My strengths are history and math. Not science.

I'm never going to try and understand Kole's brain.

I notice Raven Roth looking at me across the crowded cafeteria. I glare at her and she glares back, twice as fierce. Or at least, she tries to. Bitch.

Raven and I have never really gotten along, not even when Garfield Logan (the boy that's she's been in love with from the start of forever) and I used to hang out, back in the eighth and ninth grade. She's way too cold to have any real friends anyway, plus she thinks that I totally and completely betrayed Gar or something ridiculous like that. It gave her a reason to hate me, at any rate.

Please. I hadn't been _trying _to hurt him like that. We weren't even dating. But then again everyone knows that Gar isn't exactly the brightest color in the crayon box anyway.

"Hello lady. And Tara." I look up and see Nark grinning, thinking that he's being clever. Poor boy. If only he actually _was _clever.

"Nark, can't you go away. No one sitting at this table wants you here," I flick a fry at him but the moron has fast reflexes (it's one of his few talents) and he side steps out of the way, totally avoiding the ketchup covered blob that was coming his way. I can't believe I wasted one of my fries like that. He's not worth it. Not at all.

"I want you here," Kole pipes up, attempting to kick me underneath the table. I have to bite my tongue so I don't laugh when she winces.

The look on Nark's face is so pathetic that I snort into my food. I would find it kind of sad really if Nark didn't try so hard for her. And Kole still has no idea, the poor girl. She's so oblivious to Nark's obvious crush.

He's been in love with her since the ninth grade, which is when he moved to this school (he moved in the middle of the year while I was MIA) and she was the only person that would talk to him and actually give him the time of day. And he's been a goner ever since.

"Okay, only half the inhabitants of this table want you here. So go and sit with your buddies already."

Nark just shrugs off my comment and I know that he's about to begin our daily 'Battles' as I've dubbed them, even though neither of us usually win. It's just something that we do, because we really don't like each other and never really have. I think he's an idiot and he thinks that I'm a huge bitch.

Fact of Life: Some first impressions aren't always right. Most are.

He never had a chance to know Terra. He got here too late for her to ever have met her. Instead, to him I've always been Tara. It's almost refreshing to have someone know the real me from the start. You can almost say that he's the person that I'm the most honest to.

He sees through me in ways that even Kole can't, and I can see through him just as easily. We have an understanding.

"Tara, your hair looks especially awful today. Did you do something new to it?" My hair is actually pulled up for once today because I didn't wash it this morning, so at least he isn't having to dig that far for an insult. I'll give him props for that.

"Nark," I sit up a little bit straighter and try to mimic his tone. "Your face looks especially awful every day. And don't worry, I know it's natural."

"Are you sure you need those fries?" Nark gestures to my tray as though I'm going to gain twenty pounds just by looking at them.

"Are you sure you need those balls? Heaven knows you don't use them." I flash my brightest smile at him, and at this Nark's face turns a bit red and I know that I'm going to win. If Kole doesn't...

"Guys," Kole says, exasperated, interrupting us just like I knew she would. "Must you do this every day?" Kole hates the fact that her two closest friends dislike each other. She's forever trying to get us to play nice, and it's forever not going to work.

"Yes," we answer at the same time, and then we glare at each other. He's about as awesome as heat rash on my butt.

"She deserves it," he protests, as though he's innocent and I'm the blame for everything. Please.

Fact of Life: Only newborns are truly innocent.

"A lot of people deserve a lot of things. It doesn't necessarily mean that they get what they deserve," Kole points out, and Nark and I mull that over for a minute before he decides to disregard our whole conversation all together and starts talking about something else.

"Hey, Kole, are you coming to the game tonight?" Nark tries to ask this casually, but I can see the eagerness on his face. Nark is one of those red blooded American males that plays and breathes football, and expects the same reverence of that brown pigskin from everyone around him. It's quite sickening really, especially because he's pretty good at it. I know he's shooting for a scholarship, and I think he might actually get one.

And believe me, I'm not just saying that.

Kole doesn't even notice the look on his face, instead she's trying to get as much of the school's spaghetti (Which is actually quite disgusting, in my opinion, but Kole loves it. But she also thinks that her dad cooks edible food, which isn't exactly the case considering that he has more important things to do because he's a scientist than follow a recipe.) into her mouth as she can. When she sees us staring at her, and that Nark just asked her a question, she swallows nosily and says, "What? Sorry, I didn't catch that."

Nark repeats his question and Kole shakes her head. "Nope, sorry, I can't go. I have a million things to study for and besides, isn't it an away game? Next week Tara and I will go, right Tara?"

_Of course. Because that sounds like just as much fun as getting three root canals and sticking my foot in a bucket of acid. _I desperately want to say this, but I shrug instead, knowing that if I did let my mouth run Kole would probably get pissed and we don't want that now.

Nark looks genuinely disappointed. I'm sure he would love it if Kole became one of those girls that went to every football game and cheered her boy on and that he could talk about all of the games to, and that he could see her in the stands because she'd be right in the middle of things.

But that's just not the type of girl that Kole is, and he knows that. Or he should at least.

"See?" Kole begins smoothing everything out, the way she always does because she's just that type of person. "I'll go next week, scout's honor."

I'm about to say something, if only to deny Nark the pleasure of replying to that awkward statement, when Garth walks by. I almost choke on the fry that I'd been chewing. I hadn't been aware that we had the same lunch too. I should have realized that this would have hapened, though. The Universe and I have a complicated relationship.

"Hey Terra," he calls out, which makes Kole whip around to me excitedly.

"Tara! You know the new guy?" There are practically stars in Kole's eyes. This is the happiest that I've seen her since she failed that test this morning. Oh boy. "He's _so _cute. Do you know where he's from? Are you guys friends? How do you know him?"

Of course Kole moved here the year after he moved away. She wouldn't know that he used to be my best friend, or the fact that our mothers are friends and still talk. She doesn't know everything about me the way that she thinks she does. She might know the nature of the beast, but that's about it.

I set my jaw. I'm not about to answer any of those questions, and by the way Kole's eyes dim she knows that she's not going to get any answers out of me either. Nark, though, can't get one thing out of his head.

"Did he just call you Terra? Who's that?" He looks as though he thinks that Garth meant to call on someone else. If only Garth really was mistaken.

I look straight at Nark. "I know who I am," I say, continuing to look straight at him as I pick up my syrofoam tray. "Don't ask about things that you won't understand. I need to go, Kole, I have to go talk to Mr. Russel about the part of class that I missed."

See? I really am a good girl. Deep, deep down.

oOo

To say that I was relieved to go home would be like saying that kleptomaniacs like to steal things. Seriously. I hate high school, it is the one place that I won't miss if I grow up, and I could never, ever be a teacher.

Elementary was fun, but then again elementary is always fun. The teachers actually care how you turn, everyone is your friend, and you have recess.

Middle school, also known as hell on Earth if you're a girl, was okay, at least for me. I was never one to start many confrontations then, and I always had plenty of friends. I was never worried about being popular of fitting in so for those two years were a walk in the park.

But then High School, which in my district starts in the eighth grade, started. At first it was okay. My ninth grade year I made Varsity Cross Country and was proud of that fact. I still had friends and everything was alright in the world.

Then I made a mistake, made the wrong choice, made a boo boo and that changed everything. Now I understand why adults say that they hated High School.

It would be pretty unbearable if I didn't have Kole, or even Nark to talk to. You could say that they're my saving grace, Kole more than anyone though. Nark is just entertaining to rile up (Like the time I told him that I licked his hamburger and I didn't, which made him freak out for about an hour until I finally admitted that I lied. He didn't talk to me for a week, as if that was supposed to bother me or something.) and to make fun of.

When I got home and locked my car (even in gated communities you have to follow safety precautions, after all) and see an unfamiliar car in the driveway. It's probably one of Bob's, who is my mother's husband now, business associates or something. Those people are forever around the house, buzzing like bees around a soda can.

When I walk into the foyer and drop my backpack down by the stairs I hear a voice that makes my voice run cold. I know who that is. I might not have seen him in months, but I would have remembered that voice anywhere.

"No, I think that I've got it now," the voice is saying and it's coming even closer to me. My flight or flight instinct kicks in and it's all I can do not to run away and go up into my room and shut the door. But this is Brion, my brother. This is my family.

Fact of Life: Family is _supposed _to love you no matter what.

"Thanks."

"Oh, no problem," My mom replies. "I'm glad I could help. I hope that everything goes well for you."

They both stop short when they see that I'm standing in the same space that I am, and Brion isn't even looking at me. He's looking at one of the pictures behind us, the same one that I remember him telling me, years and years ago, that he thought it was ugly and that Bob had bad taste because Bob picked them out for my mother.

"Well, I think that I'd better go," Brion says shortly, and other than the fact that his voice is tenser than before, he gives no indication that he even sees that I'm in the same room as him.

As he walks past me I whisper, "Hi," hoping against hope that he'll respond. But he doesn't, and it's not like I really expected him to. I burned that bridge a long time ago.

Brion is my half brother. My father, his high and mightiness over in Markovia, sent him to my mother to take care of when there were hints of revolution and when dad tried to take him back Brion wouldn't go. He said that he needed to take care of my mother and his baby sister.

I wonder know that if he knew how his 'baby' sister was going to turn out if he would of stayed. Probably not. He'd probably run back to Markovia as fast as he could without a backwards glance. Brion hates me, and for good reason.

Fact of Life: I hurt everyone that I love.

"Tara," my mother says, completely ignoring the fact that my brother just totally gave me a verbal slap in the face. She's good at things like that. She believes in the 'rich people' philosophy of raising kids. You can do whatever you want as long as you don't get caught and you don't bring shame upon the family.

I've only brought shame upon the family once, and I've only gotten caught once, and believe me, it's not a mistake that I'm going to make again.

"How was your day at school?" She sounds so much like one of those concerned mothers from after school specials that it's all I can do not to scream.

"Just peachy," I say, grabbing my backpack so that I don't have to come back downstairs to get it. "I think that I'm going to go out tonight, is that okay?" I need to go out because I need to forget. I need to forget what happened today. It's so easy, especially if I can get her permission.

"With Kole?" Mom asks and I almost want to laugh. As if Kole would ever be caught where I'm thinking about going.

"Maybe, I haven't decided yet." I don't think Mom has gotten the concept that I have no friends. She probably thinks that I have millions of friends that I'm just hiding from her and that we go out together all of the time. Whatever.

"Sure you can," Mom decides after about two seconds of thinking about it. It worked out just like I expected it to.

"Great," I reply, and I'm not sure if I'm being sarcastic or not.

oOo

It's around eleven when I decide to go. I tried to convince myself that this time it will be different, that this time I won't be the girl that everyone expects me to be, but I knew that it was a lie and decided to go out anyway.

Fact of Life: It's always easiest to lie to yourself.

I drive around in my car for a while trying to decide what part to go to. It's not like I'm ever invited to any of the parties that my classmates have, not even the huge ragers that everyone comes to just to trash the house and get wasted. It's been years since I've been invited, and to be honest I don't miss it.

Once I went uninvited because I had nowhere else to go, and believe me, it's not a mistake that I'll ever make again.

Then a thought enters my mind and I drive over to the local college, right on Greek Row. The sororities here now how to party, and there are always older men (as well as free beers) here. It's a place that I've been often, although most of the people there don't remember. Thank God for alcohol induced memory loss, I suppose.

I step out of the car and I can already hear the bass booming of the music that's blaring from speakers that are most likely sitting on a folding table. The air holds sparks of excitement and desperation in the air. It smells like smoke and fear and sweat. Just the beginning of another party.

I take a deep breath and walk in, hoping that no one notices that I'm in high school. If someone _does _notice, which I seriously doubt that they will, well, that'll open a whole other can of worms that I can honestly say that I'm not ready to open.

I go to these parties to escape, so that Tara can really show her true colors. I told Kole that I'd try to stop, but it hasn't been working, and it's not like she actually expected me to stop anyway. If I stopped going to them what would happen to me then? What would happen to her?

Those are two questions that I really don't want to answer.

When I get close enough to the throng of people that are all congregated around the backside of the beautiful house I weave my way through all of the people and manage to find what I was looking for.

Sweet, sweet alcohol. The thing that dreams are made of. I find a cup and pour me some, just a little bit, and I swig it. It burns going down, but it feels more good than bad when I'm finished with it. I decide to pour myself a lot more and then start to walk around, looking for something to do.

There's some dancing (of course, at parties like these there is always some dancing) and with the porch climber flowing through my veins, making me feel more alive and alert than I have in a long time, I decide to go dance.

Almost immeadlity I find a partner. He's cute and he has red hair, but I'm not taking any chances, not tonight. "How old are you?" I ask, and I can feel the alcohol fading from my system. Damn it. That's not good. I need to go and get myself another cup. I can't do this sober.

"Nineteen."

Not good enough, bukaroo. Go find someone else to talk to. "Can you go get me some Jungle Juice?" I ask nicely and flash him my pearly whites in such a way that makes him stumble back a bit (My mother's genes shine through strongly on me, evidently she used to be able to make people do that, at a larger scale, because her charms also worked on females, too. I seem to not to be able to go that far because most girls my just don't like me.) before he nods slowly and walks off like the idiot that he is.

He comes back quickly and I manage to side step him, not spilling a drop from my drink as I maneuver my way around him. I'm not nearly drunk enough if I'm able to do this. This guy, Ginger, is though and I can walk away easily. Good. I don't need a creeper stuck to me like glue on rubber all night.

I gulp down more of the stuff and when my cup's empty I find a cup that's been abandoned on the table. I'm hoping it's drugged.

When I finish that the whole world seems to sparkle just a little bit more, and suddenly everything seems hilarious. That dude that just tripped over that rock? It had me busting my gut, and I know that I'm right where I need to be. There's just a sliver of comprehension and clarity left, but knowing me that'll all be gone soon anyway.

I get myself another cup and stumble around, and watch as about half of the other girls here do the same thing. It's hilarious, especially because the other half watches in deep disapproval. As if they are better than us.

This gets me laughing even harder, and I almost choke on the beer that I'm drinking because I suddenly have a flash of a Fact of Life. We're all the same underneath. Every last one of us.

While I continue to walk around the party I bump into a short blonde guy that has broad shoulders and is wearing a black shirt with a chain necklace around his neck. I spill half my drink on him, the other half gets on myself, and when I see that I start to giggle. Then I try to stifle them (which doesn't work well at all) and end up getting louder. The stains are pretty big, and I wonder if we're going to have a wet t-shirt contest or something.

I burst out laughing until the guy does too,even though he doesn't seem to think that it's as funny as I do. This is how I know that he's the one. I sober up suddenly, and I study him. He looks older, but at this point I could really care less about that. He's looking at me intently.

"What's your name?" he asks, and I almost giggle again.

"Tara," I reply, and then I steady myself and press my lips against his. He seems surprised at first, but he doesn't pull away.

We start making out in the corner of the garden for a while before he asks, "Do you wanna?"

I nod my head 'yes' and I can feel the alcohol fading. I want to get some more and when we pass by the table hand in hand, him leading the way, I pick up another unattended cup and chug it down. I throw the cup down on the ground before we get inside the house.

I never go inside at parties because I know that one way or another I'll get in there eventually.

oOo

I'm in that twilight zone between sleep and consciousness and I know that I'm going to have to get up.

I feel sticky and dirty and nasty, and I know why. I can hear him breathing beside me, his breath even and untroubled, and then I know that it's really time to get up.

I never stay. I always leave before morning. I would never stay with a boy who couldn't even say my name right (he called me Kara the rest of the night), let alone someone whose name that I didn't know.

I get up and get dressed, and I hope that I don't forget anything. I always do. Every. Single. Time. I don't know why I do it. Maybe I'm subconsciously trying to make my mark or something. Next time you see me maybe I'll be slashing a giant 'T' into everything.

Just the thought makes me giggle, which makes me realize that maybe I'm not quite as sober as I thought. Just to prove a point I pick up one of the many markers on the floor and I write a nice and fat 'T' on the wall, right where he'll be sure to see it. And he'll probably have to pay for the damage.

With a final snort I walk to the doorway, where I turn and look at my latest conquest. He probably won't remember what happened, with me, and if he does, well that's too damn bad. I know that it's too much to hope that I won't remember it either, because I know that I will. I always remember.

As I walk to the car, the night too still and quiet after it had previously been so loud, I feel that familiar wave of self loathing crash over me, drown me, and then pull me back out to the sea like a riptide. It always comes down to this. I'm suffocating and there's no one to pull me out. I can't fight it so I have to float here without moving.

But then the flash flood is over and I can breathe again. I get into my car and try to pretend that the tears on my face is just excess rain water from a rainstorm, but I can't fool myself this time. My car's brand new; it isn't going to have a hole in the roof any time soon. It's almost hard to drive with all of the tears coming from my eyes.

I haven't cried about this in years. The first time I cried, and the first time I did it this way, with the alcohol and the boy that I didn't know I cried. I haven't cried since, except on some nights when I had felt extraordinarily stupid or regretful.

Maybe it's because of Brion. Maybe it's because I know that he was right, and if he could see me now he would hate me more than he already does. Maybe it's Garth, who came expecting Terra and instead got me, the fucked up and defective replacement.

Maybe it was everything and anything. I can blame a lot of things, but the thing that I know I won't end up blaming is myself.

(My fault my fault my fault it's always my fault.)

I can hardly concentrate on the road and if I try to get home I'll die, or worse, I'll get pulled over. I'll bet that situation would cause 'shame upon the family'. I pull over at a small house, one that's two stories and has a yard where there are only bushes and a trellis where there are vines growing because all of the flowers have died. I begin to crawl on the trellis (which, by the way, is way hard and I wouldn't ever recommend doing it when you're drunk and you feel disgusting) and when I get all the way up I knock on Kole's window, our special knock, the one that lets her know that it's me that's at her window and not just some random weirdo serial killer.

I feel so tired now, everything from me is drained and when Kole opens her window, an resigned expression on her face, I practically collapse right then and there. I'm willing to sleep on the floor, as long as I can sleep in peace and just be left alone and untouched for a couple of hours.

"Oh, Terra," Kole breathes as she helps me walk to her bed and she lies me there, smoothing the hair from my face that's been stuck there thanks to the help of both sweat and tears. "Why do you do this to yourself?"

"That's not who I am," I say, my tongue thick and lazy. _Not anymore_, I want to say but I can barely speak now.

So, so tired.

"Yes, it is," Kole says before helping take off my shoes because she knows from prior experience that I won't do it and I'll end up getting her sheets all dirty because of my muddy flats. "You just don't want it to be."

**A/N: Good God, do you know how long this took to write? But I did it, because Tara wanted me to, and hopefully so did you. Hopefully. **

**This story's chapter lengths won't be consistent (seriously, don't expect them to be long every time) but I have a specific place in mind where I want to stop a chapter, and really it just depends on how much Tara has to say before I can stop. She had lots to talk about in this one, as you can see. **

**This is going to be one of the 'worst' chapters, you won't see much of this 'bad' stuff. And we'll be meeting Garth properly... eventually. Probably not in the next one, but the one after that. It's going to be interesting, to say the least. **

**Oh, and I'm just going to say this now because it's going to make things a lot easier on the both of us if I explain this now: Tara lies. All the time. Especially to herself. Don't take much of anything she says at face value. If you want to know all the things that Tara lied about in this chapter (or any chapter from her on out) just ask me and either I'll tell you... or I won't because it's going to be important later. **

**And now I'm going to shut up, because this Author's Note is getting about as long as the chapter. **


	4. Chapter Three

**Disclaimer: I don't own _Teen Titans. _I do, however, own my very own backpack! Go me! **

_Jar of Hearts_

_Chapter Three_

The thing that really gets me about most people is the fact that they think that they're better than me just because they've heard the rumors and have assumed that they know what's right and what's wrong. The judge me with a single glance and I'll never ever have the chance to change their opinion.

Guys look at me and see a slut, a whore, an easy lay.

Girls look at me and see the exact same thing, just in a different way.

They say that in the real world it doesn't matter so much what happens behind closed doors, that the secrets that you clutch so tightly to your underdeveloped chest don't matter so much, but I know that they do. Or at least they do in my world.

Fact of Life: People will always judge you. It doesn't matter how old you are or how much money you have or how fabulous your personality is. It's all judgment all the time.

I used to care about how people saw me. I really did and I let it hurt me when they hissed things as I walked by. It hurt when they looked at me with disdain and the girls giggled about me in the bathroom when I was in the stall and they didn't know that I was in there.

Each syllable pierced me and drew blood just the way that they wanted them to. Each sentence formed scars on my already fragile self esteem and my thin confidence. They made me run away, not only from them, but from myself.

I wasn't always this way, not really. The girl I used to be, Terra, she was nice and virginal and smart and kind of funny but not really. But then she transformed into me, Tara, because that was who they expected me to be anyway. They didn't want Terra anymore, they wanted Tara.

Believe me, they got her.

Here's another Fact of Life: Even nasty, slutty bitches have a heart. It might be buried deep underneath all the names and the sweat and the beer, but it's there and it can feel pain just as easily as yours can.

..O..

I woke up the next morning with visions of plastic rings dancing in my head and a pounding, splitting headache. For a minute I kept my eyes closed and I squeezed them tighter, as if that simple act would make me blot out the history of last night.

Just thinking that made that fierce wave of self-hatred, mixed with other things now that I wasn't drunk anymore, a potion brewed only by the truly broken, crash over me again, but I knew that this time drowning myself wouldn't work. It had never worked before so I had no idea why I have ever expected it to.

I got up, in the clothes that I had gone to school in that morning, minus the lacy pink undershirt that I had been wearing (I always, _always _forget something) with my shoes placed neatly at the foot of Kole's bed.

I couldn't remember much of the night after that guy- God I couldn't even remember his name. I always do this to myself.- and I drove myself to Kole's house, but I can only imagine what she had done for me yet again. God forbid that she actually tucked me into bed... again.

Poor Kole. She not only has to play the role of best friend to the social pariah, but sometimes she has to assume the role of mother as well. I'm not sure if she resents me for that or not, but I like to think not. She's always been there for me when I needed it.

"Hey." I turned around slowly, making sure not to make any sudden movements. My head still hurt and I didn't want to aggravate anything or make myself dizzy. Kole was standing in the doorway of her room. "Nice to see your bright and shining face this morning." I didn't say anything, but she laughed at my expression and possibly at my hair. I hadn't looked in the mirror yet but I could only imagine. "Your backpack is in the back of my closet, if you need it. Which I'm pretty sure that you do."

"Thanks," I told her, which is something that I managed to tell her every time that something of this nature happened.

"It's no problem, really," Kole shrugged. She always acted like it was no big deal when I sneaked into her house like some sort of exhausted criminal after a long night's work of selling my body or stealing candy from babies. Or worse.

I didn't say anything as I grabbed my bag I walked into her bathroom, which was connected to her bedroom by a single door, and then I locked both of them for good measure. I opened the pack that she had so thoughtfully reminded me of and saw inside a pair of shorts that I would work out in and a purple tank top. There weren't any shoes, or underwear, but there was a toothbrush with some minty sort of toothpaste, a tube of mascara and the ever essential eyeliner, and a package of cigarettes. I smiled at those, just a bit. It had been a long time since my last drag. My addiction somehow always seemed to take care of itself, one package at a time.

I knew better than to light one up in Kole's bathroom because her dad was way paranoid and insisted on having a smoke detector installed in every room so I decided to take a shower instead.

I've heard that sometimes girls, when they've had a night like mine, try to scrub themselves raw with soap and a brush, as though that is supposed to help matters. I might have tried that way back in the beginning, but believe me, it never works. It's not good punishing yourself for something that you can't take back, no use in making yourself even more tender to the world by scrubbing away some of your defenses.

I always take cold showers, it's my little joke to myself, so when I stepped out the mirror was clear, no condensation was running down the smooth and reflective edge of it. I've always hated mirrors, ever since I was a little girl. I don't know really what it is about them that always sort of freaked me out. In fact, I used to pretend that I was a vampire and say that I couldn't see myself.

Of course I used mirrors all the time now, to apply and reapply my make-up, to make sure that I don't look like a total douche user when I walk out the door in the morning, the usual things that people tend to use mirrors for. The reason that they were invented, that sort of thing.

When I look at my reflection in an unclouded mirror I always see two reflections.

One is the top layer, the thing that everyone else sees too. Blue eyes, blonde hair, the beginnings of a zit near the corner of my mouth that has a lot to do with going to sleep in my make-up and not washing it than it does with much else, and a basically pretty face. A pretty generic description of at least a quarter of the girls in America, except my hair is naturally blonde, not one ounce of hydrogen peroxide has touched these golden locks.

Then I see the real thing, the ugly red eyed monster that only the truly gifted can see glowing out of my eyes at times. This girl is needy and weak and stupid. She uses her words and cigarettes as a defense mechanism because she can't trust much of anyone, and she sleeps with random people that she doesn't know because she has daddy problems coming out of her wazoo. She has to pretend that she is someone other than who she truly is because she can't stand thinking that her old self has anything to do with the person that she has become. She has abandonment issues coming out of her ears and she can't see herself properly. Maybe some people would call her complex and hard to label.

Me? I see her perfectly. She's good for nothing. A fuck up.

She's me.

And then it's all I can do to control myself, I so desperately want to reach through the glass and pull out the girl on the other side of it and bash her head it, but to do that I'd have to break the mirror and possibly the thin walls of Kole's house and I can't do that.

Fact of Life: It's usually a bad idea to break things at other peoples houses just because you want to hurt something that isn't really there.

I hear a knock at the door. "Tara?" she calls, her voice making it through the door and through my thick skull. "Are you okay in there?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," I reply, pulling on my shorts quickly as I try to dress as though I'm properly equipped and this is any normal Saturday.

I try and pretend that what I just told Kole isn't a lie.

..O..

When I walked downstairs Kole's father was down there, which surprised me. Normally he has classes up at the college on Saturdays. Dr. Meriwether was a professor over at Jump City University and he was a well respected scientist as well.

Basically the guy had smarts, but not much else.

When he finally noticed my presence he started. "Tara!" he cried. "When did you get here?"

I open my mouth to answer, even though today I don't have a response ready made like I usually do.

Fact of Life: If you're going to be a liar you had better have a lie up your sleeve for everything.

Kole noticed my predicament and said quickly, "She just got here dad. Gosh, how do you not notice these things? She's coming with me to have my belly button pierced, remember? I'm getting that done today." For a good girl Kole can think up a lie pretty quick, especially if it's going to appease her father or help someone out. I send her a thankful look across the kitchen, and agree.

"You're still going to do that?" Dr. Meriwether asked, rubbing a hand over his face as if wondering why had had ever consented to that. Sorry bud, but not even I could say no to Kole when she wants something, because she gets so damn persistent. This probably what she did to have a cold piece of metal shoved into her navel.

Plus Dr. Meriwether, though he may be a bit distant and strange at times, truly loves his daughter and usually if Kole wants something (which isn't all that often) he can't say no. It's kind of refreshing watching that kind of affection between parent and child, especially because in my world, the one where people have more money then they know what to do with (yeah... I'm a trust fund baby) most parents and off spring just don't interact like that.

"Yep," Kole answered, sounding a bit pleased with herself. She had already picked out the belly button ring and everything. She had also researched this extensively, because this is _Kole _we're talking about, and that's when she told her dad about it so that he wouldn't have to do the research himself.

Scientists. What can you do with them?

"Well have fun. I probably won't be able to see it first thing tonight, though, because I have a couple of late classes, just like any other Saturday."

Dr. Meriwether began assembling papers into his briefcase and he went out the door. As he passed by Kole, who was sitting on a stool next to the door, he kissed the top of her head and off he went, probably to do the next genius thing that came to his mind.

"You're so lucky," I told Kole as I got a piece of toast out of the bag that was lying on the counter top. My stomach was kind of queasy but I knew that if I managed to make myself eat something, even if it was just plain toast, that I would feel better in about an hour.

"Yeah, I know." Kole shrugged. She didn't understand why I thought that she was so lucky. In fact, sometimes I think that Kole is jealous of _me_, which is just plain ridiculous. Just because I had money and lived in a gated community really didn't mean much of anything. I know it's horrible and cliché (because, let's get real here, I am just a big ol' cliché without even the benefit of having a bow on top) but I'd rather be in the normal dollar range, like Kole, and have the same kind of family that she did.

"So, are you ready to have a cold piece of metal shoved through your naval?" I asked, repeating a question that I had already asked several times over the last month, which was suddenly when Kole decided that she wanted one.

"Will you stop saying that? You're making it sound like some sort of ancient tribal ritual or something." Kole shuddered delicately, probably unable to even think about it. It made me bite my lip so that I couldn't laugh, because Kole has always had a weak stomach. When we were in ninth grade and we had to dissect a pig embryo Kole had to go to the trash can and throw up. It was really disgusting, but it was also really funny.

I shrugged and sniffed the air. It kind of smelled funny, but I just shrugged. It might have just been a candle left over from Dr. Meriwether's last girlfriend, who had fled as soon as she realized just how often she really was going to be able to see him, which was not that often at all. Kole had introduced me to her, and believe me, she was definitely the drippy hippy type, and she probably believed in the healing power of smells.

"Tara!" Kole cried, rushing over to me. What the hell? Was I bleeding or something? But Kole went right past me and she focused on the toaster which was right behind me. Somehow, without me noticing, the toast had burned and had lit on fire.

Exhibit number one of my hopelessness in the kitchen. Somehow I had even ruined toast. Really, when I live alone I'm going to starve myself to death. Trying to help I put some paper towels on the flame, remember a fact way back from second grade about how you were supposed to smother fire so that it can't get any oxygen.

That didn't exactly work considering the fact that the paper towels are highly flammable and began catching on fire as well. Kole shrieked when she realized what I had done, and being highly rational she turned on the faucet and turned on the nozzle head and somehow managed to douse the fire, her, and me all at the same time.

On the positive side, at least she manged to put the fire out. On the not so amazing side we were going to have a lot of explaining to do. Or at least Kole was. I was going to be safely at home when all of the explaining went down, thank goodness.

"Sorry?" I made the word sound more like a question than anything else. Kole just looked at me and I just looked at her and neither of us said a word.

Then Kole started to giggle, and then to laugh, throwing her whole body into it. I started laughing too, unable to control myself when she was laughing like that too. If I was being honest with myself, which is something that I usually try to avoid, it was pretty funny.  
It was the things like this, the laughs, the tears, the secrets, these were the things that kept our friendship together instead of broken.

..O..

The tattoo parlor that Kole had decided that she was going to get her belly button pierced was just like any other. It smelled like smoke and like the fluid that they used to keep the place and the skin that they tarnished clean.

One of the workers looked at me strangely (I didn't blame him. Here I was wearing workout clothes, and then you looked at me feet and you saw black studded flats. No one normal wore stuff like that.) and I gave him the finger, to which he responded with raised eyebrows and not much else. I suppose that at a place like this he got a lot of those.

A woman came up to the both of us and she had all sorts of tattoos running up and down her arm, the most pronounced of which was a green snake that had snaked its way around her arm and was hissing at something that only it could see. I wondered if she had given that one to herself, but then I realized that I really didn't care.

She popped her gum. "Which one of you two is Kole?" Kole had already made an appointment, of course. My best friend, the bad ass.

That was the whole reason that she wanted this whole thing anyway. I think that she just wanted to prove that she could be just as bad ass (if you could even call what I do 'bad ass') as I am. We had already tried this experiment once before two years ago when I had taken her to one of the parties that I attended and that had been a huge mistake.

Kole had gotten drunk so fast that night, even though she had only had two drinks, three at the most. I had to watch her every second to make sure that some creeper didn't grab her and to make sure that she didn't end up hurting herself. When we had gotten back to my house (it had been one of the few times that I had let her stay the night at my place because I knew that there was no way that I could take her back to her house with her dad being there and all) she had thrown up and I had spent most of the time in the tub, which had been furnished with my comforter and a pillow for myself so that when I heard her retching I could go and help hold her hair.

"Me," Kole answered, and the woman smiled when she saw Kole's enthusiasm. She probably didn't get these sort of reactions every day.

"And who are you?" the snake woman asked, raising an eyebrow. "Do you have an appointment too?"

"I'm just the support system," I replied and then she just shrugged and directed us to the back of the store.

We got led into an white room with all sorts of pictures on the wall; they were probably used to distract the person that was getting something pierced from the fact that they were getting stabbed all in the name of beauty.

"Sit here," she instructed and Kole immeadlity got on the chair, which looked highly uncomfortable. "I'll be right back," she said ominously and she left Kole and I alone.

I was examining one of the posters, which showed the most becoming picture of a piercing that had become infected when I heard Kole breathe heavily, which meant that she was nervous as anything.

"You don't have to do this you know," I said casually, leaning on one of the counters. "I don't understand why you're getting it done anyway. Even Nark said it was stupid, and he always agrees with what you say." _He agrees with you because he's in love with you,_I think, but don't dare say. In fact Nark had been vehement against this whole thing and had refused to accompany us.

Not that I was complaining. Now if only Kole could make someway for him to go off to China or something and never come back. That would be ideal.

"Personally I don't care what Nark says. I'm doing it because I've always wanted one, and besides, I think that they look cute."

I just shake my head and continue looking at the diagram of how to clean out your naval just in case it gets infected. Oh dear. You have to put what where?

Snake Lady comes back bearing one of those guns and I can see the apprehension on Kole's face. She's having second thoughts about this. Well good. She should. I go over to her and silently hold out my hand so she can take it and squeeze if she needs to. This had been our deal from the very beginning.

For a minute I think about how excited Nark would be to be doing my job right now if he were here and I have to bite the inside of my cheek from laughing, because poor Kole won't get the joke, and I'm not about to explain it to her.

"Don't worry," Snake Lady begins after wiping Kole's belly button with some cleansing liquid. "This won't hurt a bit."

"Are you lying?" Kole manages to squeak out and she squeezes my hand, hard. I want to wrench it away from her- if she squeezes that hard when nothing is happening then what's it going to feel like when she gets a hole in her stomach?- but I know that if I do she'll just want to hold it again so I know that it's not even worth the effort.

Kole looks positively grey and it isn't exactly a color that suits her hair if you know what I'm saying. She swallows, hard, and when I raise my eyebrows at her she gives me a sickly smile and her eyes dart around. Oh dear. Second thoughts are never pleasant.

"Yeah," Snake Lady answers, and then she smiles, putting the piercing instrument next to Kole's stomach right before Kole passes out cold in the chair.

"Oh God. Kole. Kole!" I try to gently shake her but her eyelids just flutter and I can't believe that she actually just passed out because of this. Nothing even happened. I mean I had heard stories about people doing this sort of thing, but I didn't think that Kole would be the type to ever do that sort of thing. She has balls. But obviously they don't go as far as her own balls.

"I knew she was going to do that," Snake Lady says with a smirk. "She seemed like the type. Do you want to go and get yours done instead? I bet you wouldn't pass out."

I bet I wouldn't either. I don't scare easily. "I'd like to do that about as much as you'd like to have your tattoos pulled off one by one. When will she wake up?"

Snake Lady just raises her eyebrows at me. "In less than thirty seconds, I guarantee it."

Evidently this woman knows what she's talking about because sure enough Kole opens her eyes at least ten seconds later. "Urngh," Kole states elegantly.

"Are you okay?" Snake Lady asks. "Do you want to try again?"

Kole shakes her head quickly at that and when the tattoo woman asks if Kole would like some juice and granola I can't take it anymore and I have to walk outside to take a smoke.

But of course I don't have a lighter with me, just a box of cigarettes and not much else in the purse that I'm borrowing from Kole. I'll have to ask that worker guy that I had given such a good first impression to earlier today if he has one.

When I walk over to him he raised an eyebrow at me and I raised one back. "Do you have a lighter?" I asked, pulling out my pack of cigarettes. It wouldn't be that big of a deal to me if he wanted one exchange. The less cancer sticks that come in contact with my lips is all that much better for me, I guess, if I wanted to look at it that way.

He looks me up and down in that way that most guys do, you know, the creepy way. "Are you legal?" He's asking me in such a way that it's making me wish that I had just sucked it up and wore my dirty bra over here.

"Do you have a tattoo? Yes I'm legal. Now do you have a lighter or not?"

"I've got one." He pulls a silver car shaped one from out of his pocket. "Do you have a boyfriend?" I give him his lighter back to him before I reply, just to make sure that I don't piss him off badly enough for him to take it away from me.

I take a nice long drag, just like always. "Do you have a wife?" I ask before walking away, knowing that what I just said and insinuated wasn't very nice. It wasn't nice at all.

But when have I ever said that I was a nice girl?

Fact of Life: Nice people don't go anywhere or get anything in this charming game we call Life.

Besides, don't they know that I'm not blind? I could see that gold glint on his finger from a hundred yards away.

Kole comes out of the back room laughing at something that Snake Lady is saying and all of a sudden I just want to get the hell out of there. "Are you ready to go?" Kole asks when she sees me waiting by the door. Luckily I had finished my cigarette in five long and sweet drags before she had come along or else she would have given me hell for it.

"Yes. Let's just get out of here."

..O..

When we got to Kole's house after visiting the mall (I swear that place has more and more people in it every time we go) and we end up watching one of those totally unrealistic, and yet totally popular high-school movies. You know that ones, the ones that have the guy running after the girl and her being really dorky and all of a sudden it's magic and he falls in love with that said dorky girl that he didn't even know her name six weeks before.

It's always the same old story, regurgitated so many times that it even makes _me _want to throw up.

Fact of Life: The movies always have it wrong.

But Kole loves them, she could watch them over and over and _over _again. And I guess I could know why. She's just like those main character girls, you know the ones that don't think they're pretty but they're gorgeous, the ones that are really smart, and the ones that have the cute jock partially in love with her.

Except, wait, she doesn't even know that part.

If _I _was in one of those movies I'd be, using English teacher language here, the antagonist, the one that is designed specifically for the audience not to like. It's not a bad life.

It's not like I try very hard for people to like me anyway.

..O..

I arrive home at around ten thirty, even though I had tried to stay with Kole but she had brought my mother into it and I knew that there was no way that I could win that battle. They say that the ancient Romans often spent more time in the city walking the streets than they ever did at home.

I think I can understand that.

My mother way lying in wait and as soon as I opened the door she pounced.

"Hello dear," she started and I stood in the doorway warily. I wasn't aware that I had done something that was so horrible that she would learn about it, but if I did I was sure that it wouldn't be pretty.

"Hi mom," I replied, taking off my dirty shoes and holding them so that they wouldn't get mud all over the floor, which was something that my mother abhorred.

"Did you know that Garth and his family moved back a month earlier that they were supposed to? I guess that's a silly question, seeing as how you two are in the same grade at school and all, but your school is so big that you might not have seen him. Well, anyway Garth and his mother came and visited and he seemed like he was really anxious to see you again."

"Sounds great," I said, and for once Mom seemed to catch on to my sarcasm.

"Why do you sound like that? You two used to be best friends, you should be happy. Haven't you missed him while he was in Singapore?"

"Mom, last time I saw him I was ten years old. Things have changed since then. Just because you and his mother are still friends doesn't mean that he and I are."

"Honey you know he would have come that one time if he could have-"

"He could have, Mom. He really could have. His mother did, remember? And besides, I don't want to talk about this anymore. Goodnight."

Garth was becoming far more trouble for me than he was worth.

**A/N: Is Tara starting to sound repetitive to you? Well this will be the last chapter that sounds like this, I promise! Next we'll _really _get to meet him, and I'm excited because Tara's world will get shaken up. Plus, who's wondering about _'that one time' _that her mom mentioned, the one that Tara refuses to talk about? I'm not (obviously), but it's going to be interesting, promise! (Oh and if anyone knows Garth's comic canon mom's name is please tell me because I honestly have no idea and I kind of need it...) **


	5. Chapter Four

**Disclaimer: I don't own anything that anyone recognizes, and if you think that I do, well, um, yeah... maybe you should get that checked out...**

_Jar of Hearts_

_Chapter Four_

I've seen scenes like this one before, whether it be in movies or in real life. A group of four girls, oh so shiny with their glimmering braces that just glint in the florescent light, their make up sparkling with the glitter that most girls like to cover up with.

Their laughing and whispering, and while that could mean several things I have a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach that it doesn't mean anything good. They glance at me as I walk into the bathroom, and the brunette looks at the blonde who just shrugs and keeps going.

They don't care that I might have to be the one who cleans up their mess in the bathroom. They don't care about much at all, other than keeping their reputations and their looks and the boys that whisper to them on top of the mattress.

I walk into the bathroom and brace myself. I'm almost expecting a batch of fresh blood to be spattered throughout the floor and a heart strewn against the walls.

Fact of Life: The worst pain isn't always physical.

Instead I hear sobbing from inside one of the stalls. If I was a better person this might have made me feel horrible.

If I was a different person I probably would knock on the door and ask her _what's wrong_ and _what happened_ and the ever lovely _what can I do to help_. Instead I go to the mirror and get out a tube of mascara and start fixing my make-up, the whole reason that I came in here to begin with. Believe me, I don't go around looking for innocent girls to save.

Fact of Life: I'm not the hero type. Never have been and never will be.

Defending the innocent and protecting the weak? Yeah, not really my thing. I would be more likely to run away and save myself than to risk my own skin for somebody else.

I know the type of broken that this girl, whoever she turns out to be, is and I know that all of the kind words in the world won't help. These kinds of wounds have to be left alone to be able to scab and then to scar, an ugly but successful way of healing.

I don't make a sound as I hear the door squeak open. This girl looks surprised to see me in here, and mascara makes its way down her cheek like a particularly ugly tear. She sniffs and I don't bother to offer the words that I know will mostly likely make her feel worse before they get better. I don't ask if she's okay, because I know she's not.

She looks to be about fourteen and like she is trying too hard. Her shirt is too low cut for her to wear considering that she has no boobs to speak of, and her mouth is too wide and her nose is too pointed for traditional beauty.

For a moment I ponder about what she could have possibly done, but then I remember that you don't necessarily have to do anything to get people to hate you, and that I also just don't care.

Silently I hand her a packet of those mini tissues that I kept in my backpack and an almost empty tube of mascara that I haven't thrown away yet simply because I'm a pack rat and can't bear to sentence anything to a landfill.

Fact of Life: Sometimes the simplest things can create empires.

..O..

"You have that new boy in your next class, right?" Kole asked, dragging her brightly painted fingernail across the peeling paint of the table that we always sat at before fourth period.

"Garth," I finally said, still not entirely sure what possessed me to admit that I knew his name. "His name is Garth, and yes, if you must know, he is in my next class."

"Lucky you," Kole cooed, conveniently forgetting my reaction towards him last Friday or the aftermath of it. "He's cute."

No. Not lucky me.

"As cute as Joey Wilson?" I deflected the spotlight away from Garth and onto Kole's very obvious crush. This morning she had found some excuse to talk to him, and the look on her face was so gooey and sweet that it made me sick. I wondered if Nark had seen them together. Even I had to admit that they looked cute together, from a distance.

The blood rushed up to Kole's cheeks, staining them that brilliant pink color that they always got when Joey was mentioned. She's lucky that I haven't mentioned him to Nark yet; then they might be permanently stained that color.

Kole didn't bother to answer my question. Instead she got out her backpack and pulled out something for me. "You left these at my house," she told me. I opened the bag and saw that they were my cubic zirconia stud earrings, the ones that I often wore. I would be missing those soon.

"Thanks," I mumble as I take them from her and stick them in my bag. Kole doesn't say anything to me for a while, but then she smiles at me in that special way of hers, and I almost groan. Things aren't going to go well for me when she smiles like that, I just know it.

"So you're totally coming to the football game with me on Friday. Kay? Kay," she says this very fast, and like a valley girl to boot, which she knows gets on my nerves. Then bell rings, which saves her from my sharp and sarcastic retort. Darn. And it was a good one too, something to do with drowning myself under water.

For a minute I want to run away. I don't want to talk to Garth, I don't want to go to class, and I don't want to be myself anymore. I want to run far enough away, far enough that people don't know who I am and I can pretend to be someone, anyone, other than Tara Markov.

I loathe the fact that to save myself from an uncomfortable conversation I'm willing to run away from my whole life and never look back. So I grit my teeth and force myself to put one foot in front of the other the whole way to that wretched class room.

Maybe he won't sit next to me today.

Who am I kidding? I'm never that lucky.

..O..

I'm the last one to walk in the classroom, of course, and there's only one desk open, the one in between the wall... and Garth. I clutch my binder so tight that the plastic edge of it leaves red marks on my hands,.

But then I remind myself that I'm Tara Markov, so why did I care about a boy, even one that had been my best friend in the whole wide world and the one person that I really missed before he had showed me that he had totally abandoned me, just like everyone else.

I didn't care. I never cared. I was just this huge noncaring person that hated everybody. Especially him. I glided into my seat and made sure that my hair covered my face so he couldn't see it. It was forever doing that, getting in my face and over my eyes and once upon a time I had used clips, my favorite being in the shape of a butterfly. But I didn't use it anymore, because I've grown up now.

Slowly and methodically I open my backpack and pull out my spiral before turning it to a clean page. I then pull out the pen that I had out of my pocket and place it nice and neat on my desk. We have a sub which means no learning. Which also means that we can talk for a whole forty five minutes.

If there is a God he would take mercy on me and just strike me down right here and now. Obviously there isn't one.

The whole time Garth hasn't tried to speak to me, hasn't really even looked my way.

"Hello Terra." Ah, here we go. I'm not worried though, not really. I'll be able to repell him, just like I do everyone else, and he'll be running from me screaming.

He's looking at me, a slight smile on his face, looking so formal- like an old man. He was wearing a sweater and jeans, his hair combed back and his face clear. I remember even when we were younger he was like that- he hardly ever got dirty and his hair was always neat. He was quiet too, I remember that. Quite the opposite of how I used to be. He and I seemed to balance one another out, I kept him from drowning and he kept me from drifting too far away. Or at least it used to be that way.

"It's Tara," I say shortly, hoping that he'll get the hint that I don't want to talk. That I just want him to go away and never think about me again. He'd done it well enough for ten years if the fact that I never saw him, not once, and he never contacted me. His mother could come and visit, but he was always just _too busy_.

That means that by the time he was fifteen he had grown out of me, that he didn't care. And that was fine because by the end of my fifteenth year I had grown out of him too. So long innocence also came to mean so long Garth.

I never thought that I would see him again, never thought that we'd be within ten feet of each other, close enough that if I wanted to I could reach my hand out and touch him arm. I wonder if he remembers all of those times in his backyard, back when I was a knight and he had been a king, back when I pretended that I could save other people. I had never gotten the hang of saving myself.

"What?" he asked me softly, shifting in his seat so that his whole body was facing me. I grabbed my pen and pretend that I could stake his heart with it, if only to keep me sane.

"My name isn't Terra anymore. It's Tara." I hoped that he would get the message. My name wasn't Terra and never would be again. That girl, the one he had known, was gone.

"Oh, okay." He was half smiling at me, as if what I just said was funny. I wanted to punch him in the jaw, to scream at him and to tell him to leave me the hell alone. As it was I felt my eye twitch and I turned away from him again. "So, Tara," his voice made me want to scratch at my skin. He was driving me crazy. "Why the sudden name change?"

Now it was my turn to smile, even though I didn't really think that his question was funny. If I told him the real story I would send him packing his bags so fast that he'd probably forget a few things; I send them to him with priority shipping.

I opened my mouth to tell him everything, but I found that I couldn't make myself; I really was that pathetic. I didn't want to see the disgust in his eyes, to hear the revulsion in his voice. For some reason I didn't want him to think badly of me, but I also didn't want him to confuse me with the vivacious little girl that I once had been.

So, like the liar that I am, I lied to him instead. "For the same reason that you breathe. Because I can." I had no idea why I was still talking to him. If this had been anyone else I would have been able to simply give them the cold shoulder or ignore them. If they had been anyone else I would have screamed at them awful things that would have made them leave me alone once and for all.

But Garth was different, and I hated the fact that he was. I couldn't bring myself to tear into my new best friend. That didn't mean anything, though. I knew the fact that if I had the chance I would be able to, but now when he wasn't doing anything to me? I didn't have the heart to do it.

"Oh." There was a pause and I thought that maybe he'd finally leave me alone. It's not as though I was being some sort of chatty Cathy over here. Garth was really making an effort to speak to me, because he was never one to talk just to hear the sound of his own voice. "How have you been?"

_Abso-fucking-lutely fantastic. _"What are you, forty five years old?" I snapped, growing tired of this game. Maybe I wasn't going to be a total bitch to him, but I'd be damned if I told him how I was doing, watching him pretend that he cared when I knew in reality he didn't give a shit.

At my outburst he gave me that half smile, the one that signaled to me that he was amused, again, which made me want to kick him again. "No," he answered, deciding to go the plain spoken route.

If I had to go through this every day I would just spare Garth the trouble and kill myself. It was that simple. "Stop talking to me," I finally responded harshly and a surprised look crossed Garth's face before he decided to look amused again.

"Okay," he answered, which made me grit my teeth.

I couldn't wait to get the hell away from him. Forever.

**A/N: Yeah, this is a thousand years late and it's short. Forgive me, please, the next update should be faster (I hope) and the next chapter will be longer (I know). Not much has really happened yet, but they got to talk! Don't worry Garth'll be sticking around. **

**-RFE**


	6. Chapter Five

**Disclaimer: I don't own anything you recognize. **

_Jar of Hearts_

_Chapter Five_

The line between my dreams and nightmares may have been so thin that it was practically invisible, but I still remembered the long and lazy days of childhood. Garth had been my best friend since our mothers, women practically cut from the same cloth, were friends and we just naturally grew together, the way that two cherries grow together to eventually become one.

But then he left me, just like everyone else did. I didn't want him to come back, not now. He would just be one more person to expect things from me that I couldn't give. One more person to become disgusted with me. One more person to disappoint.

Was it any wonder that I didn't want him around?

..O..

I honestly couldn't believe that I was actually here. That I was actually doing this. Kole had better thank all her lucky stars that I was so damn cooperative. Sometimes I hated myself for going along with all of her crazy plans.

It was cold, I was in the middle of a crowd, and I was showing school spirit. Three things that I absolutely could not stand. Kole, of course because she's such a great person, was having the time of her life. Or something.

Me? Not so much.

Something happened on the field and then all of a sudden everyone around me stood up, the band that was on the right of us started playing what Kole had informed me was our school fight song, and then everyone went absolutely crazy.

I really wanted an aspirin.

"Tara!" Kole called, looking down at me. I could barely hear her over all the noise. "We just scored a touch down!" Obviously she wanted some sort of response to this ground breaking news.

"Woo-hoo," I said, waving around the complimentary school flag that we had gotten at the gate thanks to the Spirit Club. My wrist got tired after the second motion, though, so I stopped. It wouldn't be in my best intentions to go home with a sprained wrist. Kole looked at me, obviously frustrated. "What?" I asked after she sat back down again. "It wasn't my idea to come to this stupid thing."

"You could at least _act like _that you want to be here." I just looked at her and she finally backed down. "Okay, okay. But still, it means a lot to Nark that we're here. Football means a lot to him."

I snorted, as if Nark really gave two craps that I was here; he was really only worried about Kole. "Kole, honestly, if Nark knew I was here he would probably be really surprised, but that's it. Really."

She got a thoughtful look on her face as she watched my face. "I think that you two actually do care about each other more than you let on." I honestly could not believe that she just said that. Denial, thy name is Kole.

Fact of Life: It takes a special person to be that delusional.

"Kole. Seriously?" She just nodded at me, which caused me to roll my eyes. Time for a change in subject, and I knew that the one thing that would get Kole's mind of of being stubborn was that one special person. "Is Joey here?"

Kole frowned, it was the first time that I had seen her look down all night. "No. He said he doesn't come to these kinds of things." I didn't blame him. This wasn't exactly where the artsy fartsy type like him would be welcomed. "That he didn't really like them." I had to bite back my smile. I was starting to like this kid more and more, and I hadn't even met him yet.

"Don't worry," I drawled, "the fact that he's not here is a sign that he has at least half a brain." It seemed like everyone that I despised and everything that I despised- two for the price of one!- was here and I absolutely could not wait until the damn thing was over and I could go home and pretend that this had never happened.

The clock on the scoreboard seemed to be mocking me. Five minutes had passed, at least, so how had thirty seconds only gone by on the scoreboard? Tease. Kole owed me. She owed me big.

To help pass the time I imagined all of the ways that she could make it up to me. Maybe she could be my personal slave for a month; I wouldn't mind having someone to massage my feet every day. Or carry my books around. Or even carry _me _to class. Kole was shorter than I was, sure, but I weighed less than she did so I could probably catch a ride piggy back if I was really being serious about it.

_Or _she could banish Nark from our company for two weeks. I bet that'd break his heart. It couldn't be any longer for two weeks, though, because any longer than that and Nark would turn into a pathetic puppy dog and he'd probably follow us home or something utterly ridiculous like that. I wouldn't put it past him.

Even when Nark and I were in fights- which, to be honest, was over half the time- and he couldn't stand the sight of me the longest that he could stay away from Kole was a week and a half before he went absolutely insane.

If I had a heart, which I don't, I'd think that was cute. But because I was who I was I thought the whole thing was pathetic. He either needed to grow some balls and tell her or to get over it. Either way wouldn't end well for him. I knew that Kole didn't have feelings for him beyond friendship, and I think that deep down Nark knew that too- it's why he never said anything.

And now that Joey had come into the picture everything had just become a thousand times more complicated for our resident doofus. Now he'd have to work harder for Kole's attentions. Personally the whole thing made me smile. And it made me want a cigarette because I knew that watching this thing unfold would probably make my whole month.

I just hoped that I got front row seats.

Suddenly Kole grabbed my arm, "Look," she cried, her gaze set on people down at the bottom of the stands, "it's the new boy, the one that talked to you at lunch the other day."

Oh, of course it was. This just made my day _that much _better- which was to say not at all. I could honestly not believe how much _annoying _there was in this football stadium. If everyone annoying left I'm pretty sure that the only people that would be left would be me, Kole, and the janitor and the only reason he'd be there was to make sure that he got his two fifty an hour.

He was walking with Raven Roth and Kori Anders, of course. They had been friends and I'd heard that Garth had kept in touch with Garfield Logan (Smell that smoke? Oh yeah, Garth had definitely burned me.) and as they all had this circle of friends, kind of like the mafia, they were probably now friends with him as well.

Of course they were, Garth didn't have a mean bone in his body and everybody had always liked Garth. He'd always had this quality about him that made him instantly likeable. That, along with the fact that he was practically Adonis made over, made him a hit with the ladies.

Call be paranoid, but I wondered, as I looked at them together, if Raven was telling him things about me. Things that everyone at school already knew, granted, but still. I wondered if he believed her. Probably, Raven had always had this sort of quality about her that made you think that she was extremely honest. Maybe it was the fact that she never lied, but just because the girl was Honest Abe didn't mean that I had to like her or anything. Bitch.

They looked like they were arguing though. Even from my place high in the stands I could see that Kori looked uncomfortable. If I remembered right Kori had never been able to stand confrontation between her friends. If people did something to her friends that was another matter, of course, but whenever there was a squabble between two people that she cared about Kori was always the fragile peacemaker.

This time, though, she probably couldn't do that. Garth was shaking his head at her and he started walking up the bleacher stairs. I could see Raven telling him something after him and he turned around, responding to her. I almost wished that I could see his expression to get some idea of what they were saying, but his back was to me and the only expression that I could see was hers, which didn't exactly mean much. Raven had always been skilled at keeping her emotions off of her face- a trait that I had always admired and wanted for my own, as loath as I was to admit that.

And then I realized that he was walking toward us- toward _me_- and I wanted to groan, put my head in my hands, move away, or all of the above. But I couldn't do anything because Kole was sitting right next to me.

Kole had no idea about our history together- it was one of the things that I kept hidden even from her. She had moved here after he had left, which was how I latched onto being her best friend in the first place. After he had left I hadn't spoken about him much, because it hurt and I had missed him.

After I grew up a little, and he'd gotten his opportunity to make it up to me but didn't, I didn't talk about him because I had outgrown him and I wanted no reminders of Terra, the hopeful little girl. So history was in the making here because Kole was going to meet Garth for the first time ever, my two best friends one old and one current going head to head.

I was not excited about the fact that the only people that really truly knew me, maybe even better than myself, were going to be in such proximity of one another.

As fate would have it as soon as he sat down next to me the other team scored. The irony of this did not escape me. "Hi Tara," he said, and I was relieved that he called me by my right name. I didn't want to have to keep reminding him of my name.

Just because he swam like one didn't mean that he had the memory of a goldfish, thank God.

I couldn't exactly ignore him so I made a noise at the back of my throat and I watched him smile as though I had just thrown my arms around him and screamed in joy. If I ever become one of his fangirls please shoot me with a shotgun.

Ever the polite bastard Garth turned toward Kole, "I'm Garth, a friend of Tara's. I don't think that I've ever met you...?" he left the question open and Kole was all too happy to finish the thought.

"No, you haven't. From what I can gather you moved away before I came here. I'm Kole, and you obviously already know Tara."

"Yes. We grew up together."

This simple statement had the power to make Kole's eyebrows raise to new heights. "Really? She never said anything like that."

"Well that's Tara, she's full of secrets now." What was _that _supposed to mean?

Finally I couldn't stand them talking about me as if I wasn't sitting between them. "Oh yeah, I'm a real woman of mystery." I glared at Garth and he looked back at me, amused. I had just given him what he wanted and I didn't want to do that again, so I decided that no matter how annoying things got I wouldn't say anything. But my mouth couldn't resist adding one more thing. "Or at least I am to my old friends that ignore me for almost ten years. But it's not like that's my fault, is it?"

I smiled sweetly at him and I saw that emotion, the one that I had seen earlier in the week when I had demanded that he stop talking to me, flash over his face, as well as guilt. Ha. I suddenly felt a surge of strength fill me. I was victorious. I felt invincible when I brought people down. If I was being honest with myself that feeling was kind of disgusting, but it was kind of like how a dog barks; I couldn't help it.

I saw questions in Kole's eyes when I turned around but I refused to answer them and I knew that Garth's politeness, the kind that had been ingrained and bred in the both of us through and through (the kind that I had shed like a second skin), kept him from disagreeing with me.

That and the fact that he knew that I was right.

"So..." Kole started, trying to restart the conversation that I had affectively killed, "where are you from?"

Garth settled down, at ease at what was most likely going to be an interview like scene, but he couldn't completely hide that emotion from me. I knew that it was there behind everything. He never had been able to hide things from me.

"I actually moved here when I was two years old, and then my Chip, my stepdad, got a promotion to move to Singapore. He's in the oil business, and when there was that huge oil spill in the Gulf his company felt like it would be better if we came back to the States."

As soon as he mentioned Singapore I saw a light flare up in Kole's eyes. She's always wanted to travel. I fight back a groan and settle in to what is probably going to be a long and drawn out conversation that I won't be a part of.

"What's it like there?" she asked excitedly and Garth smiled at her reaction.

"Well, we can't chew gum. It's illegal."

"_What_?"

"They're really strict on trash and litter over there, so there's not gum. I had to come back to the US if I wanted some." I have to resist the urge to raise my eyebrows. When did he come back to our lovely country?

It's kind of sad how much I cared about that. Pathetic, really. I should just get away from him, from everything that he represents. He brought back things that I hadn't thought about in a long, long time.

If I hadn't smothered her for so long, and had been so practiced at doing it, he would have brought Terra back.

I stopped listening as he started to describe the Pacific Island that he had lived on and just watched the players on the field. I couldn't make out who was Nark and who wasn't because they all looked the same to me. Just little boys in uniforms playing a game.

His voice was starting to really grate on my nerves. It's not like his voice was annoying or anything in the traditional sense of the word, but I couldn't stand listeing to it. I started to grit my teeth and clenched my jaw trying to get his voice out of my head.

He didn't sound like he did before puberty, obviously, and it was a nice, deep, rich voice but the fact of the matter was I wanted to banish him, or something. Kole was listening to him like he was the best thing since sliced bread, but I begged to differ.

Eventually it just got to be too much and I stood up and walked off, going to the bathroom or something. If I was going to react like this every time I saw him I was going to have to get over myself.

I promised myself that I wouldn't react like this ever again. I wouldn't ever run away from him or anything pertaining to him. That had always been one of my vices, I wanted to run before anything bad happened and I couldn't do that anymore.

I found my way to the bathroom and found an empty space of wall that I could slide down. I put my hands over my eyes and my head between my legs.

Suddenly a sweet little face got in my sight. A little girl with large brown eyes and brown hair to her chin clipped back so that you could see who she was. She was wearing a cheerleading outfit. "You're crying," she announced in wonder, her high voice traveling throughout the bathroom. "Mama says that big girls don't cry, but you're a big girl and you're crying."

Big girls don't cry. That was a sentence for only myths and Fergie songs, not in real life. I hadn't been crying, thankfully I didn't cry when I was mad, only when I was upset or sad.

I always cried, though. It was just one more thing to loathe about me, the fact that I cried so easily, but I'd always been emotional. According to my mother when I was four years old I had watched the _Titanic _with her and had sobbed at the end of the movie because Jack died. (I didn't know if that was true, but it probably was.)

"Big girls cry too," I said, knowing that if anyone but a little girl had come to my rescue I would have lashed out at them, but I had always liked younger kids. They were so innocent, so candid, so open and curious to everything, the total opposite of what I was. "We're just not supposed to."

"Oh." she paused and put a hand on her hip. "Well, you shouldn't cry. You're pretty," she commanded.

"Thank you." I really wanted to laugh, but I couldn't because she was looking at me so earnestly."You're pretty too."

Before she could respond her mother called harshly for her. "Patty! Leave the girl alone and let's go," she sent me an apologetic look. Patty looked back at me, as if to make sure that I was going to be okay, before running up to her mother.

With a sigh I decided to follow Patty's example and got up and walked all the way back to Kole, Garth being noticeably absent. Well, good, that was the pretty much the point.

"He left," she informed me as soon as I sat down. "I was actually kind of disappointed because I really liked him. Why did you do that?"

"Do what?" I asked innocently, as if I had no idea what she was talking about. This did not amuse Kole, and she narrowed her eyes at me, seeing through my act complexly. I hadn't realized that I was going to piss her off this much; it was one of the things that I took for granted because she hardly ever got mad at me like other people did.

"Scare him off like that! What did he do? He said that you two used to be friends. What did he do?" Kole repeated.

I wanted to tell her, but I knew that if I did that she wouldn't understand and I didn't want her to know because it was shameful and horrible. This was something that she didn't know about and I certainly wasn't going to admit the truth to her. I didn't want to explain myself.

It wasn't what he _did _exactly, it was what he _didn't _do.

I shrugged and she looked at me with careful eyes before looking at the game, which thankfully was almost done. Once it was I could go home and act like this had never happened. Then I would face Garth, one day, eventually, and things would be okay, I hoped.

**A/N: God, I am so so so so so so so so so so so so sorry! Really, I am. I just kind of... left fanfiction for a while. But I've really missed all of the characters in this story, Tara especially. And Nark. I will try to get better, I really, really will. And Clair-Rae, I promise that I will go review your fic like soonsoonsoon. **


	7. Chapter Six

**Disclaimer: I don't own **_**Teen Titans**_**! And I don't think that I've mentioned this yet, but I also don't own the title, which is a beautiful song sung by Christina Perri. **

_Jar of Hearts_

_Chapter Six_

I've always been good at running, specifically running away from something, not running towards something. When I first started running track back in junior high I used to imagine that I was running _from _something and not toward the finish line. It was easier, back then, to pretend.

Fact of Life: Sometimes you don't really need to _go _anywhere. Sometimes you just have to get away.

Of course once I started getting serious about it I knew that I was running to a destination, I knew that eventually I would stop. But the fact of the matter was I was still moving, still running, still going.

I always liked long distance the best- the farther the better- and I was always better at it than I was a short distances.

Between fight or flight I'd pick flight, always.

:-:

I was driving to the track, one of the few places that I was ever truly happy, because no one ever tried to talk to me there. At the track, and I went to the public high school's track and not my own, where I might actually meet people that knew me. (I went to a private school thanks to my mother's ability to smell a buck from a mile away. But Bob's still a downgrade, if you think about it. After all, my dad's still a king.)

But here, away from everything familiar, no one spoke to me. Occasionally one of the older women would smile at me if we were walking through the chain link fence at the same time, but it was a rare occurrence.

There was gravel and and dirt in the 'parking lot', if you could even call it that, and while I almost fell every time that I walked on it, otherwise the place was perfect.

Running was one of the few things that made me happy. My mom says that I ran before I walked and that Garth was always trying to catch up with me (that just shows how close we were once upon a time, how often we were together). But now I'm still a runner and no one ever bothers to try and catch me because they know that they can't.

I wouldn't let them.

When I was younger I ran on the school's cross country and track teams, and I was good. In ninth grade I had to only shave a few more seconds off of my time and I would have qualified for state. But then I slept with a teacher and the whole world found out, which made the coach have a

But here's the thing that I love most about running was: While I was doing it I forgot everything that I thought was important. I forgot to hate myself, forgot who I was, forgot what I had once been. The only thing that was important was the burning of my muscles, the track beneath my feet, the air rushing through my lungs.

And time, always the time.

I had to cut down on my smoking thanks to the fact that I started running again. When everything had first happened I cut myself off of anything that I used to love and started smoking and letting boy's hands up my shirt.

But I couldn't stop running and even though now I could run three miles a day, three times a week if I really pushed it (five miles if I felt like puking up blood). So I went, every Tuesday, Thursday, and the occasional Sunday if we didn't have anything better to do, which we mostly didn't. Ever since Brion started not coming to Sunday dinner...

The thought made me wince, since that was all my fault. Covered in sweat and breathing like a smoker that just kicked her own ass to get herself to run three miles at one time I started jogging a cool down mile and happened to notice a very nice car sitting in the parking lot, which was not a regular occurence, if you could believe that. This was The Hood after all.

But I ignored the feeling that this car was familiar and finished my cool down mile, and walked to the 'parking lot' only to find a Garth, of course, looking at me almost as though he was amazed or something. "Did you time yourself on that last mile?" he asked, turning toward me with his phone showing a stopwatch device. Creeper, he had been watching me on my last mile. If that's not sick I don't know what is.

"No," I lied, thanking God that these weren't my tight pants and so he couldn't see the outline of my stopwatch. "I didn't." There, three words. My mother had told me to start being polite to Garth, but this was hard for me. Three words automatically filled my quota as being more than one word and now I was free to leave his company.

Except, of course, I had told myself that I wouldn't run away from him anymore. I would stand my ground. And I really, really suck at making promises. "What are you doing here?"

Garth looked amused at the suspicion in my voice. "I have an on land workout too, you know. And we're not really members of the Country Club yet and the school track is getting revamped. This was the closest place to home that I could find. Don't worry, Tara, I wasn't stalking you or anything."

"Could've fooled me." A corner of his mouth picked up as I said this. Garth had never really grinned, not really, and nor did he smirk but this was probably the closest that he had ever gotten. Garth was too nice a guy to smirk, or something. His facial muscles just wouldn't move that way.

"A lot of things fool you," he told me as cool as a cucumber. How he could say this to me and be so calm had always been beyond me. I couldn't help but remember how long it always took to rile up Garth properly, but how when you did things were very, very bad.

"What _the fuck _is that supposed to mean?" I snarled, not really knowing why his words were effecting me so much. Rage boiled in my veins, dark and frothy. For a boy who hid his buttons very well he certainly knew how to push mine. I should have let him effect me at all, but he did. Maybe it was because I knew that he never, ever lied. Or he didn't, because after all, I didn't know him anymore. We had grown up, that much was clear.

"It means that you spend so much time trying to fool yourself that you let other people fool you as well." Ever the grammar Nazi he kept his words clipped and firm, his proper English sweeping towards me like a wave.

"You don't even know me. Stop pretending like you do."

"But I do know you. You're Terra Markov, daughter of the king of Markovia. You like to run and you can't stand reading a book or sitting still for five minutes. Your favorite food is grilled cheese and you can say the alphabet backwards. You haven't changed as much as you think you have."

"And what do _you _know about that?" I asked, my tone scathing. "You've been back for a week and all of a sudden you're the Tara encyclopedia? That's total bullshit. And it's Tara. T-a-r-a, Tara."

"I've heard some things around the school, and you forget how close our mothers are. All I have to do is ask and my mother will tell me."

I couldn't believe that we were having this conversation. I couldn't believe it. He hasn't seen me for nine years and the first time that he can corner me alone he chooses to ambush me? Un-fucking-believeable. "I'm surprised that you even asked. It was pretty clear that you stopped caring about me a long time ago."

And all of a sudden that emotion came back, the one that I saw at the football game, the same one that I had seen the first time that I had pushed him away. I still couldn't name it, but I could tell when he felt it now. "Tara-"

"I don't want to hear it," I cut him off and turned on my heel, my feet slipping on gravel. It was almost like slow motion but I could see everything blur and I heard my knee pop and I saw everything as I hit the ground. I heard something scream and then I realized that it was me.

"Tara?" Garth leaned down and his face was near mine, so close that I could have kissed him if I wanted to. But I didn't want to. I wanted to scream at him to go away, but then I realized that I didn't want that either. I just wanted this pain to go away, because I could not let myself cry in front of him even if I was in pain. "Are you okay?"

I managed to find my voice for this, but even I could tell that it was laced thickly with pain. "What do you think, jackass?" Not even cursing at him could make me feel better. _Damn this hurt._

Garth smiled thinly. "At least I know that you're not going to die. What hurts?"

"My knee," I panted, and then I realized what that meant. It meant that I wouldn't be able to run for a long, long time. Of course Garth would make it so that I wouldn't be able to do something that made me happy. I chanced a look at my leg and then realized that _that_ was the wrong thing thing that do. My left leg was already swelling and one of my kneecaps was twisted to the side; I had dislocated it.

Bile rose to my throat and I had to swallow hard so that I didn't barf on myself or Garth. "We need to take you to the hospital," Garth told me.

"And you have a bad haircut," I said, because apparently we were stating the obvious. I didn't know if he heard me properly, though, because I had to bite my lip so hard that I started bleeding shortly after I said that. Garth didn't reply but instead scooped me up as though I weighed almost nothing, and he avoided touch my hurt knee, which I was thankful for. If he had touched it I don't know what I would have done.

Pulling out of the parking lot of doom and dislocated knees Garth sped and he drove me to the nearest hospital. I hoped that he wasn't going to try and make me walk; this was all his fault and it would be proper pennence to make him have to carry me to the emergency room.

"C'mon," he said, "we need you to limp to the emergency room to make you look more pathetic." I couldn't argue with his logic. He put his arm behind me and I bit my lip so that I didn't start crying pathetically when I accidently put weight on my left leg.

He then put me into a chair in the waiting room and went to go find a nurse. On the right of me a kid was screaming because he had something in his eyebrow, and on the left there was a man huddled in on himself and on the other side of him there was a woman murmmering something to him, rubbing his back in small circles. I didn't even want to know what was going on with him, with either of them really,

Then Garth stood in front of me, a nurse with him. "Tara Markov?" the nurse asked, popping her gum as she did so. I couldn't help but notice that her dark roots were showing. As _if_ you could get this color out of a bottle.

"Yes. That's me."

"I need you to come with me." Garth helped me out of the seat that he had so carefully placed me it, and we followed the nurse, who had thankfully decided to be a human being and slowed herself down so that she was going a speed that we could follow, which was about .3 miles per hour.

I really wished that I could tear myself away from Garth walk by myself, but I couldn't do it because the pain was too much. I didn't think that I could walk alone without collapsing. As soon as we got into a room that looked a lot like a doctor's office the nurse asked me for insurance.

Obviously, I didn't have any. "Garth," I said, "I need your phone. Preferably now." He handed me the phone without saying a word and I flipped it open, pressing the all of the numbers needed to call my mother's cell phone. I was surprised to find that she was already a contact of his.

"Hello," my mother said warmly. She must have really thought that this was Garth because when she normally answered the phone she tried to sound business like even though she had never had a nine to six job in her life.

"Hey mom, it's me. I'm at the hospital." My name should have been Ms. Nonchalant. _Oh hi, I'm Tara, and I go to the hospital all the time. I'm such a total klutz and boys totally make me fall all over myself all of the time. _

Not.

"_What_?"

I couldn't say that I was surprised at my mother's reaction. "I need the insurance information, can you give me that please."

I could hear her rummaging through her purse. She gave me the information and I relayed it to the nurse, who wrote it on her clipboard and then left. "Tara Markov," my mother said, almost sounding dangerous but not quite, "tell me what happened."

"I fell and I think that I dislocated my kneecap."

"Are you with Garth?"

_No, I just jacked his phone and am now calling you from it_. "Yes."

"Let me talk to him, please." Wordlessly I handed the boy his phone and I turned away from him. My own mother trusted him more than she trusted me, of course. It's not like I could blame her. After all, I'm a liar and Garth used to be the most honest boy that I knew.

With nothing to focus on I could feel the pain in my knee and I wanted to cry again. My leg looked disgusting, all swollen and big all over. If anyone touched it I would scream. I wanted to scream right now, but I gritted my teeth against the feeling. I was not that big of a baby, I had had worse injuries before. None came to mind, of course, but I'm sure that something hurt more than this.

I breathed in my nose and out my mouth over and over again until I heard Garth stop talking and shut his phone. He started at me and I stared back before saying, "This is all your fault, you know." I took a deep breath through my teeth and held my breath, counting to ten.

That amused look that I was used to seeing on his face came back. "Okay, Tara, whatever." He didn't seem inclined to argue, and that was just fine with me. It's probably because he knew that it was true, honestly there was no way to deny it. I was right and he was wrong.

Fact of Life: We'd all rather be right than wrong. Too bad we're wrong almost ninety nine percent of the time.

We sat in silence for a little while, me doing my breathing exercises and him texting someone on his phone, until the doctor came it. He was good looking but I saw a wedding band and decided not to take my chances, not with Garth right there. Wouldn't want him to think less of me, or something.

"Hello Tara," the doc said brightly, his blonde hair glinting in the florescent lighting. I could tell that he got his teeth perfessionally whitened. "I see what the problem is here," he stated, zeroing in on my leg. "How'd this happen?"

Leave it to a doctor to ask questions. Cops and doctors are always the worst, though, so it's not like I was surprised or anything.

"I fell," I answered. Thank God I was getting distracted, otherwise I would be screaming right now.

The doc, Doctor Matthews according to his clipboard, placed a cold hand on my knee. I bit the inside of my cheek hard enough to draw blood. The metallic liquid did not make anything hurt any less. "I see. Well, I'm going to have to put it back in place before I can do anything else. You might want your boyfriend to hold your hand for this."

Garth looked up at me but before he could move I said, "He's not my boyfriend. I dont' need to hold anyone's hand."

"Okay." Doctor Matthews raised his eyebrows. "I've got to warn you, though, this does hurt." When I nodded but didn't say anything he told me, "On the count of five, okay? One. Two. Three." And all of a sudden, when I wasn't expecting it, he grabbed my kneecap and straightened it out. I screamed and brought my hands to my face so that they couldn't see the tears that had leaked out against my will.

Damn doctor.

"Now I'm going to have to give you a prescription for some pain medication, and I want you to stay off leg for about two days, no running for about three weeks, and don't do anything too crazy, okay. I know how you kids are these days." He smiled at us indulgently, as if he was our grandpa or something. He tore off a piece of paper and handed it to me. "Best of luck," he told Garth, who seemed surprised but he didn't respond. "Bye Tara." I nodded in response as he walked out the door. Good riddance.

Now the pain was receding, which was a huge relief to me. I would be able to walk out of here by myself, and I should have been able to go to school without there being any sort of deal. "Do you want me to take you home?" Garth asked.

"Do I honestly have a choice?"

Garth smiled at that. "Not really."

**A/N: The characters really surprised me in this one. This doesn't normally happen, but when it does I'm always happy. Garth ended up being more upset with how Tara's been treating him than I expected. But I hope you enjoyed anyway, it's a bit late, but better late than never, right?**


	8. Chapter Seven

**Disclaimer: I don't own Tara or Garth or anyone remotely interesting. **

_Jar of Hearts_

_Chapter Seven_

Once Kole told me about this scientific thing that she said she remembered only because she said that it reminded her of me.

I don't remember what it was called, only that it had to something to do with matter and atoms. She said that the basic gist of it was the fact that matter never really and truly changed. It could break into a million pieces, it could be altered, but it stayed the same no matter what.

She tells me that I haven't really changed, that making one mistake didn't turn me into what I am today. And she's right, it wasn't just one mistake; it was a million, starting from the moment when I got conceived.

I wasn't supposed to be born, I wasn't supposed to happen. It was a mistake.

I wasn't supposed to fall in love with a teacher, we weren't supposed to get caught. It was a mistake.

Mistake after mistake, one right after another, waiting in line to haunt me, they swirl around me, creating the very essence of me. A mistake, a flaw, a blemish, they're all me. No matter how you put it, no matter how you try to change that, it's true.

Fact of Life: There's no magic eraser, everything you do you do it in permanent ink.

Good luck keeping your past from staining your future.

:-:

"Great job on Friday, Nark," Kole said, smiling up at the big lug. I wanted to barf and it looked like he wanted to salivate. I was surprised that his tail hadn't fallen off from all of that excessive wagging that it was doing. "You did really good, Tara and I were watching you."

Nark regarded me skeptically before turning back to Kole. "_She _went to a game? Was she behind the bleachers the whole time?"

"Actually," I drawled, leaning back in my chair and taking a sip of water. Let him think whatever he wanted, he was going to rot in hell one day. I hoped. "I was in the stand the whole time, thank you very much. And just to let you know," at this I leaned in close, stage whispering to the dunderhead, "your butt looks damn good in tight pants."

I leaned back in my chair, getting as far away from him as I could, and watched in satisfaction as he spluttered, unsure of what to say. It wasn't very often that I disregarded the script, but when I did it really got to Nark. He grew beet red and I took a sip out of my water bottle. "Well I bet you wouldn't look good in tight pants," he retorted, but he did it lamely. Even he had to admit that my ass would look great anywhere.

Kole raised her eyebrows at us, but thankfully didn't say anything. The last thing that I wanted to do was get scolded. I was up all night thanks to my knee and because I had forgotten to take my pain pills. By the time the pain got really bad I hadn't wanted to get up and so I had just lain awake until morning came and I had to get ready for school. It was a miserable life and I was still pinning the blame on Garth's attractive shoulders.

"Garth!" Damn, speak of the devil. I saw his head whip in our direction. "Over here!" Kole shouted, being obnoxious, probably on purpose just to spite me for what happened at the football game. Everyone in the cafeteria, excluding the pot heads, was looking in our direction. I wanted to bury my head in my backpack, an alternative from sand.

"Kole. Shut. Up," I hissed, but it was too late. That kid does not move fast only in water, believe you me. It was probably something like five seconds, I was counting. I watched as Nark appraised Garth, seeing what he was about. Oh, if only the Neanderthal knew what his real competition was...

"Kole," Garth acknowledged, "Tara. And I don't think that I know you..." Garth left the thought open, all of the blanks left for Nark to fill in. I hoped that he would be able to catch on.

"Richardson," our football player supplied, "Nark Richardson. I'm a friend of Kole's. And you are?"

"Cresta, Garth Cresta."

"And I'm Bond. James Bond," I cut in, exasperated of all of this 'manly' last name crap. I gestured to Kole, "and that's Malfoy. _Draco _Malfoy."

Garth desperately looked like he wanted to laugh. Nark looked like someone clubbed him over the head, but that look wasn't unusual so I let it go. Kole's head was underneath the table but I could see her body shaking so I knew that she was laughing. The corners of my mouth twitched and mine and Garth's eyes met.

If this was a teen movie we all would have been laughing already, and then we would have put aside our differences and become best friends. Nark and I, the love hate couple that everyone adores, would date and Garth and Kole would go out, slowly and shyly and tentatively. Then there'd be some conflict and then that ever elusive happily ever after, the one reserved for fairy tales and Disney movies would come about. The end.

But we weren't anything like that. Technically we were people that shouldn't even be speaking to each other. The role of the outcast went to me, the role of the bubbly good girl went to Kole. Nark was the jock, obviously, and Garth was the all around good guy. We were almost like the mutant Breakfast Club.

Honestly my joke wasn't all that funny, and I knew that. But sometimes things like that and you just can't help stop or start a moment. They come naturally, few and far between, but things like this you can't form.

The magic in that moment stopped and we all remembered who we were, what our respective roles were. Nark and I couldn't stand spending ten minutes in each other's company, Garth and I were the estranged best friends, Nark was the outside force that had somehow been brought to us and Kole was the fragile glue that held us all together.

Pathetic, all of us. Kole cleared her throat, this time ending the magic for good. "So, Garth, why don't you sit down? Unless, of course, you were going to go eat with someone else." I saw him hesitate and then glance across the room.

Of course he wouldn't want to sit with us, wouldn't want to sit with me. If he was telling me the truth about asking people about me then he must know of my reputation. We wouldn't want to tarnish our reputation by sitting with riffraff, would we Mr. Atlantean?

He was probably going to go sit with Gar and all of _his _friends. That would be just peachy, considering they all hate me anyway. They'd probably tell him to go take a bath in hand sanitizer before he sat with them because he was talking to me.

"Actually," he admits, looking a bit sheepish, "I was just going to go eat lunch in my car."

Oh, he's going to play the sympathy card now, is he? _Poor me I'm new and have no friends. _Oh please. But of course this works on Kole, who couldn't say no to a lost puppy- even if its spleen was showing.

"Well then, you've got to sit with us!" Kole exclaimed, predictably. Garth smiled at me, almost triumphantly, as though he just won some battle or something. Bastard. I turned my attention to Nark.

"So, when are you going to go away?" I asked pointedly. Nark glared at me, but didn't say anything. Of course he wouldn't be going away now, not if there was going to be another contestant in the game of Kole's affections. It almost made me feel sorry for him that he didn't realize about Joey, but then again Kole hadn't even wanted to tell _me_, I had figured it out on my own and then had to wrestle it out of her. Nark just didn't have the kind of context clue reading skills as I did.

I sighed, knowing what a lost cause was when I saw one. There was a lull in the conversation until Garth decided to open his mouth again. "So Tara, how's your knee?"

I glared at him. How dare he bring that up? It was all his fault anyway. "It's fantastic, no thanks to you."

"What on Earth are you talking about?"

"It's all your fault that it got dislocated in the first place!"

Garth raised an eyebrow at me, and he looked like he was entertained again. I wanted to kick him, but them I remembered that I couldn't because of the boy sitting across from me. Throwing my lunch tray at him might be an acceptable substitute, though. "Whatever you want to think." His words brought back memories from our confrontation over at the track and if I was that type of girl I would have been embarrassed.

"Wait," Kole interrupted, ever the peacemaker. "What happened to your knee, Tara? You didn't tell me that anything was wrong with it, you said that you just hit it on your dresser this morning."

Fact of Life: That line's a classic excuse for abuse victims, Kole. Keep up, will you?

She glared at me, as if it was my fault that I've always been a liar. "Garth made me fall over at the track this weekend."

Nark, of course, had to offer his two cents too. "You run?" He seemed incredulous, not that I blamed him. After all, once I realized that he could read I was incredulous too. I decided to nod in response, not trusting myself to speak.

"Tara was only a few seconds away from state our freshman year," Kole said with a hint of pride in her voice. Both of the boy's heads turned to look at me, but I just glared back.

"I didn't know that," Garth said quietly, looking down at his sandwich. He didn't know that because he didn't care, I didn't know what on earth Garth thought that he was doing with his whole innocent act, because it certainly wasn't working on me.

"If you were that good then why'd you stop?" Nark asked, genuinely curious this time. He understood, because he was an athlete too and he knew that when you were really good at something, and you loved it, how hard it was to give that up. Kole and I lock eyes, because out of everyone here she was the only one that truly knew what had happened. Nark had no idea, and if he did it was because of the high school gossip mill, and Garth probably knew, but only vaguely, if he knew at all.

I decided to shrug as I answered. "It just wasn't fun anymore."

Hey, at least it was a half truth.

:-:

When I get home I open the door and feel like announcing my presence by slamming the door angrily, but then I smell the cinnamon and know instantly that my mother is entertaining someone. She always lights up candles that saturate the whole house with their smells when she has company over. I have no idea who it could be, but they're most likely important. Mom doesn't open our house up to just anyone, after all.

I can hear their soft voices coming from the dining room. "...oh Berra," my mother croons. I can almost imagine her face, the way her blue eyes would look large in her small face, the way that her lips would think in concern. "Was he okay?"

"Not for a long time," the woman says, and then I suddenly recognize who it is. I would recognize that voice anywhere. It's Berra, Garth's mother. Her voice still has an Atlantean accent to this day, with its drown out 's' sound and its muted vowels and clipped 'c's. She used to tell Garth and I stories on the days that we used to refuse to be separated, even for bed, and I remember imagining her voice being able to wrap around me like a warm blanket.

My mother has basically lost her Markovian accent and has wholeheartedly accepted America as her home, but Berra has never forgotten her Atlantean heritage and refuses to. I remember her telling my mother once that she wanted to remember Atlantis, a small island country in the middle of the Caribbean, even all the bad memories, because it gave her Garth.

"I don't think that he's gotten over it, even today. It's been hard for all of us, especially because he thinks that he should have done something."

"But there was nothing that Garth could do," my mother protested.

"That's what we told him, but he won't listen to us."

I take that as my cue to enter, I don't want to have time to think about whatever my mother and Berra are talking about that has to do with Garth, I don't want to care. "Hi mom," I say as I enter, and my mother and Berra both stand up. "Berra."

"Terra, darling," Berra says, opening her arms to me, and I don't have the heart to correct her. When I was younger I used to find it amusing that our names rhymed. My mother raises her eyebrows when I don't say anything, but maybe she's used to Berra being an exception to everything. "You're absolutely beautiful now. You look just like your mother!" She envelopes me in a big hug and I sink into her, remembering the days when I really was Terra and I had a best friend and no worries or unnecessary angst. But then she lets go and I'm myself again.

"Thank you," I reply, knowing that I'm going to have to be polite to her or face my mother's wrath, not that I would ever be rude to Berra. Berra smiles at my mother.

"Why don't you come sit with us, Tara, we were just talking," my mother invites me, and I sit in one of the armchairs across from the love seat where Berra and my mother were just drinking coffee, their mugs still on the table, not a wet ring in sight.

"I'd love to." I flash Berra my best smile and remember the last time she was in my house, three years ago. I hadn't been smiling then, I promise. I probably hadn't even made it out my room, by that time.

Looking at Berra and my mother side by side you can definitely see the similarities. While my mother might be all gold and blue, and Berra might be dark, you can see women that are cut of the same cloth. Both of them fell in love with the wrong person and the wrong time, and they both got abandoned. They both moved to America to make a new start, managed to snag a rich husband even with a baby on their hip. And they're both absolutely beautiful.

"So, Terra, how's school been?" Berra asks me, and I have to fight from gritting my teeth at my name. It's amazing how... _wrong _it can feel after not being called that for several years.

"Oh, you know, schoolish," I respond and Berra smiles warmly at me. Like hell am I telling her about the incident today where I got slammed into my locker by some girl as she walked by because I looked at her boyfriend the wrong way. I had screamed at her and we almost got into a fight before a weary teacher stuck her head out his classroom and told us to move along. The girl had left then, and there had been a boiling in my blood the whole rest of the day.

"You know, your mother and I were just talking about you and Garth..." Berra trails off and looks at my mother, who nods. She seems almost scared to say something, but then she's always been kind of scared of confrontation. Funny how she helped create a daughter who practically thrives on it. "He says that you two have a class together?" The way she says it makes it sound like a question.

"Yes, we do. Life studies, or something like that. We don't really do much in that class, so I don't really pay that much attention." My smile gets tighter as I say this.

My mother decides to play the concerned parent routine. "Tara! That's horrible." I smile at that, look at her, trying to be all parental.

"And you should see the teacher, he's a real... old guy," I end lamely, because the two of them tensed up when I mentioned something about the teacher not having a uterus.

Fact of Life: One mistake and it'll haunt you forever. Scout's honor.

My mother decides to break the awkward silence that grows between us as best she can. "So, Berra, why don't you three come to dinner. We'd all love to have you over, and maybe even Brion would be able to come."

At mention of my half brother and Garth in the same sentence I choke on my own saliva. What what what?

"That sounds lovely!" Berra says, clapping her hands. "What do you think, Terra?"

"Sounds great." _I think I'll just go dig my grave now please... _

"Then it's settled. You can come to dinner this weekend. I'll go call Brion right now."

**A/N: Eh, it's kind of short, but it'll do. Also, who wants to know what's going on with Garth? What were Berra (btw, before I forget, thank you Clair-Rae for telling me Garth's mother's name) and Tara's mom talking about? It'll all be revealed, lol. Also, thanks to The Createn for reviewing last chapter, I wish that you had an account so I could thank you properly! And yes, I am a girl. :) 105% sure of it too. **


	9. Chapter Eight

**Disclaimer****: I don't own **_**Teen Titans**_**. If I did Terra/Aqualad would be total canon and I'd have so much money (probably) that I wouldn't know what to do with myself. **

_Jar of Hearts_

_Chapter Eight_

Self-help books all lie. I know that there are some people out there that treat those things like the bible, the holy grail of literature, but whenever I see someone reading them I laugh. Everyone that reads those things are lying to themselves.

No one really wants to improve. We think that we're absolutely perfect, that we're all so wonderful. At least until life slaps us in the face, hard. This doesn't happen often enough to people, I think.

Fact of Life: Self improvement stops at potty training.

:-:

It's easy to say that I am _not _having a good day. My head throbs, my knee aches, and all of my books for some reason have decided to fall out the bottom of my backpack. I had known for a while that I needed a new one, I'd had this one since tenth grade and it had seen quite a few sights in its short life, but when my mother mentioned something about it I had automatically gotten stubborn and had refused to get a new one.

I was now having to bend down and make sure that I get every last stinking thing and put them into my arms, my knee screaming at me about moving it too fast.

I have to straighten up again, making sure that my knee is stable enough to walk, and I then begin the long trek out to my car. "Tara!" I hear a recognizable voice, and I groan. Yet another way to make my day even more abso-fucking-lutely fantastic. _Not_.

It's Garth. Doesn't he have swim practice or something; last time I heard he'd gotten so good at swimming that he doesn't have a life without it. I try, and fail, to start walking faster but my damn knee suddenly increased my age by sixty years and the average snail has started to beat me in long distance races.

Is it even necessary to say that Garth caught up to me? "Hey, do you want me to carry your books?" he asks, voice chipper.

"Gee wilickers," I respond brightly, giving him a five hundred watt smile that's so obviously fake that he's probably surprised that it's not painted on, "Sure I do, but this isn't the fifties, the feminist movement is past buckeroo. Chivalry is not required here." My fifties slang wasn't exactly up to snuff, but I hoped that that was okay.

"How about manners. Are they required?" Without speaking Garth takes the majority of books out of my hands.

I make a sound of protest in my throat but he chooses to ignore that. "Definitely not. If they were I would have already been out on the street, fending for myself and living off of the fine selection of delacacies in the closest dumpster."

Garth smiles at me, a smile that would make any other girl's heart race. It's too bad he's too young for me, and that he did what he did. What he _knows _he did, but still he chooses to ignore that and tries to pretend that everything's so hunky dory even when it so isn't.

But he's always been like that, even when he was younger. But he could never lie to me, and he still can't.

"Well, that's too bad, because I'm going to help you anyway." Garth pauses as we get to my car and I open the door and throw all of my binders and folders and textbooks into the passenger seat, just in case Garth's getting any bright ideas. I take the ones out of his hands and throw them in there too, and my car is now so messy that my mother's probably going to blow a gasket if she looks in there. At least I can blame it on Garth, she won't get mad then.

"There, you helped me. Your damsel in distress quota filled?" Garth just smiles at me again, but he doesn't say anything. "What?" I asked, my eyes narrowing. I'm almost proud of myself that I've kept it together this long, if he was anyone else I would have told him to scram. But I really did need help, not that I would ever admit that in a million years.

"You're just really funny, Tara. You always have been," he says, still smiling.

"Well, isn't that fabulous," I mutter, getting into my car but leaving my door open so that I could still talk to him. "Don't you have some kind of practice or something?"

"No, Arthur gave me the day off because my family's having dinner at your place. Is Brion going to be there?"

Brion wasn't going to be there, thank God. That's the one good thing in this otherwise shitty day, Brion wasn't able to come. His girlfriend probably had some kind of art show or something. I shake my head and start my car, trying to be subtle about the fact that I don't want to talk to him, if you count revving your engine as subtle.

Garth looked amused, as always. I bet if I ran him over he wouldn't look so amused all the time. He probably wouldn't be able to move his face at all...

"Well, I see you've got places to go. I'll leave you alone now."

"Can you promise to leave me alone forever?" I asked, just saying the first thing that pops out of my mouth. His smile gets wider at that.

"Nope," he says. I roll my eyes as I drive off.

:-:

When I get home my mother is freaking out. Of course, Mom always freaks out right before we have company, but then as soon as they get here she calms down and becomes the perfect hostess, just like always.

"Tara!" she screeches at me, curlers still in her hair and a can of hair spray in her hand. She's probably been wandering around the house like that all day. "Go get dressed! It's nearly five o' clock."

"Mom, what time's dinner?"

That makes her pause. "It's at seven." The air suddenly deflates out of her like a balloon and I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing. "Oh never mind but make sure that you're ready by at least six, they'll be getting here at six thirty!"

"Yes ma'am." I salute my mother but by the time that I do her back's already to me and the gesture is lost on her. I just shrug to myself and trudge up the stairs to my room where I frown because I have to pick up all the dirty clothes on the floor.

Once I do that I decide to get ready, which basically means I have to brush my hair, put on some more mascara, and a decent shirt since my jeans are already dark enough to pass as 'dressy'. I'm ready in fifteen minutes and I get a text message from Kole as soon as I'm ready.

_Good luck tonight! :) _it reads. Kole's always been the type of texter that likes to use proper grammar, no matter how long in takes her. I think that's just because she's naturally perfect at everything. I told her about the dinner tonight, and even though she doesn't understand why it's such a big deal that Garth's coming to dinner she's still supporting me. The things friends do for each other.

_Thx_, I text back and then shut my phone off. I'm left wondering what I'm going to do for the thirty minutes that I have left before our guests get here before I hear my mom's voice calling my name from downstairs.

"Look what I found," she tells me, holding out some sort of book to me. I take it from her slowly, unsure of what it could possibly be until I see the cover. _Garth & Terra _it reads in sticker letters. "It's pictures of you two. Isn't it wonderful that I just found this?" I don't say anything but I look up and I can tell that she's lying. She probably has planned this; she's probably had this in her room the entire time. She just wants Garth and I to have a common ground again, she wants for us to spark memories and see how things used to be.

Well newsflash, mother, I'm not the girl I used to be.

"Great. Thanks." The smile I offer her is tight and she pats my cheek twice before moving on. Sighing I put the book in the middle of the coffee table so that the mothers can ooh and ah over it and it's contents. They most likely put it together, but I don't really remember that.

My stepdad, Bob, comes in the room and smiles at me. "Ready for this?" He knows how much I despise the formal dinners that my mother likes to throw. Of course his business meetings aren't much better, because they're bigger and the clothes that you have to wear are ridiculously formal. I have a gown or two in my closet for those things.

"As I'll ever be," I say, giving the standard answer. We both jump when the doorbell rings, but then we both laugh at ourselves. My mother is suddenly in the room, her heels clacking on the hardwood floors.

"Well? Open the door, Tara!" Of course I have to be the one to open the door. Pulling in a deep breath I make the muscles in my face form a smile and hope to God that the doorknob slices my hand open when I touch it. It doesn't, because that's just my luck, and I see all of them standing in the door way.

Garth's wearing some kind of button down shirt and khakis, his hair looking like it's been combed. Berra's wearing a tight dress and Garth's stepfather is wearing the same thing that Garth is, except with a sport coat. Well, at least everyone's all spiffy.

We all exchange the obligatory hugs and compliments except for Garth and I, who just eye each other warily. I'm sadly underdressed, or at least that's what it feels like when I look at everyone else. I'm imagining how they'd all react if I'd take off my shirt right here and now in the pretense on putting on a new one when my mother interrupts my thoughts. "Honey, why don't you show Garth around? I'm sure Garth would like to see the house!"

"Mom," I say, sounding like a very whiney teenager. I don't care. "No he doesn't. He's not an interior designer."

But Garth has to intervene, and quickly, ever the little manners instructor. "Yes I would. I'd be honored if you'd show me the house, Tara." His eyes are laughing at me. I'll bet if I poked them out they'd stop laughing.

I really, really needed to stop with these violent fantasies.

"Then it'd be my pleasure," I simpered. I could play this game too, and well. I started walking toward the first hallway and Garth followed, both of us leaving the adults in the foyer. "Well, this is Mom and Bob's bedroom," I said, gesturing my hand towards one of the rooms. "This is a bathroom. The parlor. Bob's home office. The bathroom." When I finished the ground floor Garth was still looking at me expectantly. "What?" I demanded.

"Aren't you going to show me your room?"

"Oh for the love of Pete," I grumbled, aware of the fact that my mother was still watching us. "Come on. It's upstairs." I trudged up the stairs, my stalker following, and I opened the door wide, suddenly upset that I had picked up my dirty laundry. It would have done Garth a world of good to see one of my bras on the floor. Or at least it would make him want to get out of my business.

He stepped in and I followed him, sitting on my bed. He was examining my shelves as though they were an abstract painting in an art museum. I wondered what his problem was. "What's with all the rap music?"

"What do you mean?"

Garth shrugged. "It's the only kind of music that you have up here. Most girls like bands with love songs, that sort of thing. These singers aren't exactly very romantic."

"Yeah, well, they don't have to be. They tell the truth in their songs."

"What do you mean, the truth? That all you need is sex, drugs, and music?"

"No, that all anyone's every looking for is a good romp between the sheets. All those love songs? They don't even mention the fact that basically that's what everyone's looking for in a relationship. They're all just words."

Garth looked at me as if he was seeing me in a whole new light or something, and then he shook his head. "Do you really believe that?" he asked me. I nodded, hoping that he'd leave me alone. "That's sad." He turned back to my shelves, probably examining the decor now that he had already critizied my taste of music, the bastard. "You have a lot of pictures of you and Kole up here."

"Only three," I said, looking at what he was talking about. There was one picture of us, in a frame that Kole gave me, the two of us are laughing in a way that doesn't make our faces look attractive and my arm is around her neck. There are two more, but that's my favorite picture of us. It reminds me, sometimes, that I'm not completely and totally alone.

There's a pause in the conversation, like there often is with us. We aren't completely comfortable around each other yet, unless that's just all me. It probably is all me. After all, everything is my fault.

"You know, I'm kind of surprised that they haven't checked on us yet," Garth suddenly says, a smile on his face. He thinks that he's making a joke, that he's being funny. I can make that smile turn upside down like _that._

"Well, my mother would probably be ecstatic if I was fucking you right now," I say crudely. I have to bite down on my cheek, hard, to keep from laughing at the way that his eyes widen.

He quickly recovers his composure, though, because that's just what he does. Ever the cool and collected Garth Cresta. "Why do you say that?"

I make myself shrug carelessly, as if what I was saying didn't really matter. As if it was no big deal. "Because you're my age." I can see what that does to him, in his eyes. He knows what I'm referring to, he definitely knows.

All of a sudden he looks frustrated and he runs his hand through his hair hard enough that I'm surprised chunks of his scalp don't go flying everywhere. "Why do you do this, Terra? Why do you say things like that that you know will confuse me. Why do you hate me so much? Why?"

I cannot believe that he's honestly asking me that question. He doesn't know. He really and truly doesn't understand, I can see that in his eyes. I stand up and walk toward him, every word I take a step closer until I'm right in front of him. "It's not what you _did_, Garth. It's what you _didn't do_."

"What is that even supposed to _mean_?"

I cross my arms across my chest to seem intimidating when really I'm hugging myself, trying to keep it all together. I cannot believe him. I really, really can't believe him. "You _left _me. You left me alone here."

"I was nine years old!" he protests. "I had to go with my parents. I didn't _want _to. It's not like I walked out on you. I had to."

"Well maybe you had to leave, but you didn't have to stop talking to me! You didn't have to lose contact with me."

"I sent you letters. I did."

"Yeah, the first two years. The last letter I ever got from you, I was twelve years old. It was half a page on notebook paper. I wrote you back and then... nothing." I make a motion with my hands to make my point. "Absolutely nothing."

For the first time since he moved back he looks... ashamed. "I was just a kid, I didn't know any better. Some of my friends made fun of me when they knew that I was writing to a girl so I just... stopped. I'm sorry for being stupid."

"You know, that would have been okay with me if you hadn't done one other thing."

"What _else _could I have done?"

"Remember four years ago? We were fourteen." I can see in his face that he's still confused so I continue on in my story.

That had been just after that thing with Mr. Wilson had happened. I had stopped going to school and started just staying in bed, crying. I had been so horribly pathetic and I knew it. One day I just wanted to die so I had written my mother a note and told her that I was going to kill myself.

I was going to do it too. There was a bridge a couple of miles from my house and I had walked the whole way over there. But when I looked at the dirty water below I say nothing. I saw myself. I had looked up one last time, to see the sky one last time, and I suddenly realized that it was a sunny day. And then I hadn't wanted to do it anymore.

I sat down on the edge and had wrapped my arms around my legs and just sat there, looking at the sky. That's where my mother had found me with Bob, tears streaming down her face and mine. She had hugged me and brought me back into the car.

The very first thing that she had done was called Berra all the way over in Singapore, even though our time zones were radically different. I had spoken for the first time that day when I realized what she was doing. "Can Garth come too?" I had asked. I had wanted to see him, had wanted to see my best friend. He was the only person that didn't know what I had done. I wanted to remember with him what we were like when we were younger. I had wanted him to be with me.

My mother had looked at me like I was an alien when she realized that I had spoken, and then she relayed my question to Berra who had said that she would work on it. I had sat back in my seat, satisfied, and I waited. And waited. Soon Berra came but she did not bring her son. I listened to them talking about it later because sound traveled in the house those days. Garth didn't want to come and see me. Not he couldn't, he didn't _want _to.

I had hated him ever since. I wasn't ready to let that go, even when he was standing right in front of me.

But I didn't tell him any of that. Instead I just said, "Your mom came to visit. Remember? She came to visit and you didn't and that's why."

"I was a stupid fifteen year old boy then! I didn't want to deal with it, I didn't want to know that I had a suicidal best friend. But don't worry I paid for that. Karma, it's not pleasant." He grimaced then and I wondered if this had something to with what our mothers were talking about the other day.

"Yeah, well, you know those letters? The ones that you wrote to me? I burned them, all of them. I didn't want anything to be in my life that reminded me of you. And then you just had to come back. I was better off without you."

He just stares at me then and I stare back. He looks part horrified and part confused. He probably thinks that I'm being melodramatic, that I'm the stupidest person in the whole universe. Good, I'm glad he does. Now maybe he'll leave me the hell alone and he'll never talk to me again. I do so hope that's the case.

We just stand and look at each other until my mother calls us down for dinner. I take a deep breath and copy and paste a smile on my face. Garth still looks dazed as he makes his way to his seat, the one next to mine because my mother's that subtle.

She pulls me aside just before we eat. "I'm glad to see that you and Garth are getting on so well."

My face hurts as I smile back at her. "Me too."

Dinner goes by in a blur of nothing. I talk when spoken too, I say the right things at the right time, but there's no where that I wouldn't rather be. I would rather do anything else than to sit next to him.

Throughout the whole dinner Garth's quiet, well quieter than usual, but no one notices except me, and that's probably because I know _why _he's acting like he is. He goes through all the motions flawlessly, even better than me, but I can tell that he's not all there.

But I've always been able to tell things like that about him. That's what happens when you're with someone since you were born.

At least, until your not.

We all send them off with a smile and then I go and clear off the table, letting my mother and Bob wash and dry the dishes.

When I go upstairs I look underneath my bed until I find a box, the smooth cherry wood that almost burns underneath my hands. I know that it's just my imagination, though.

Fact of Life: Shame always burns.

I open the box with shaking hands and take out the papers in it and smooth them out, getting rid of all the creases and wrinkles that they've gotten from rereadings over the years. I look at the childish handwriting and then at the fact that at the end of all of them there's the same closing.

_Bye, Garth. _

**A/N: I know some of you are like **_**that's **_**what she's been mad about this whole time? Really? But yeah, it is. Tara's prone to freaking out, remember. I mean, on the show doesn't she go all physco crazy over something that wasn't even Beast Boy's fault? She overreacts BIG TIME. Because that's just how she is. So she's been mad at Garth for years and years. I think she got most of it off her chest, but it's not all gone. Hopefully it will be, though. :) Also, I totally stole the toilet training line. Free cookies if you know where I stole it from. **


End file.
